In the modern world of SEO, establishing what the user actually wants when they visit your page is key to the success of any campaign. It is possible to have a page with zero authority, even poor design (although we don’t advocate that!), but if it answers the user’s query your page will show up.
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Proof of this concept is sites like Amazon, they rank for nearly every single possible keyword you could think of just because of the huge volume of products and content on their site, but if the page doesn’t match what the user is searching for it isn’t going to show even though they have humongous authority.
Identifying Searcher intent
A good way to establish someone’s intent around a search term is to Google it, then analyse the search results, if you find the search engine has identified exactly what you are searching for you then need to analyse whether there is competition.
You will properly find one of four things happen
Generally when you are looking up the search term you intend to target you will find one of the few things will happen…
1) Results will be totally irrelevant
This is a bad sign, and you should reconsider your search term.
2) Results will bring back partially relevant, but not what you were expecting
This is normally where Google has identified the person searching for this term doesn’t perhaps quite know what they are looking for.
An example:
We did a search for ‘how to change brake pads’ whilst it did returned one result for how to do the repair, all the other results on the page were about ‘how do I know when my brake pads need changing’ and ‘how much does it cost to change brake pads’
This means you need to change your search term, or change your content idea to match in with the intent that Google thinks you are trying to achieve.
3) The result will bring back a few useful results, but not a full page and/or low authority domains
Probably the best case scenario, this means you have two options, creates some outstanding and relevant content or compete using average content and use your domain authority to outrank everybody else.
4) Search results full of high quality content and domains
A digital marketer’s nightmare, unless you have a very authoritative site and some outstanding content, it is very unlikely you will be able to compete in this environment. Normally it is best to work on a different idea with less competition.
By all means go after it in the long haul, but don’t expect overnight results. It will require a huge amount of hard work, and you will properly need a team of people and plenty of money to throw at it.
Compare the sites that are on the first page with yours and establish whether you can find a space to slot in. That is to say if the page is full of high authority domains you might be better putting your effort elsewhere, especially if they have done a good job at the content.
