Buyer Intent Keywords – The Key to Powering Up Sales

ByGord Collins

Buyer Intent Keywords – The Ones Real Customers Use

Did you know your visitors are affected by the words you use on your site? It’s true.  And the words they use when searching also indicate their search intent, including whether they will buy something. We call these high intent keywords and you need to find them and use them in your copy. You may need to consider them when working on your content strategy and designing your website as well.

Your best targeted customers/clients use these particular, themed high intent keyword phrases. They like to see them in your advertisements, homepage, subpages, blogs, tweets, FB posts, infographics, spoken in your videos, and even somehow shown in your instagrams.

These high intent keywords when added to your regular keywords, strike a resonant chord and maximize whatever intent they possess. It could be the difference between finding and converting a good prospect, or having none at all. Whether your business is car insurance, real estate investing, buying and selling homes, digital marketing, selling mortgages, selling cars or solar roof systems certain words can power up sales.

There’s nothing worse than mistakenly targeting the wrong people. I’ve done it, you’ve done, and the most successful, profitable sites have done it. But through experimentation and testing, marketers can discover which keywords real customers actually respond to. The rest might be wasting your time.

It’s not easy to be an effective online copywriter. We have to write on the exact right topics that prospects are interested in. Our copywriting must appease Google’s algorithm by using the correct keywords and other related words, be entertaining and informative to actual readers, engage them in a topic, build their buying intent, and compel them to take action.  So many demands. Yet if we put the words customers want into the page, we might be doing the one key thing that actually creates sales.

Choose the right topics and you’ve won half the battle. Use the best high intent keywords and you might win the other half

Here’s an look at buying intent phrasing. Let’s say you were looking for a vacation in Costa Rica, Central America, what words would you think what perk up your interest? Beaches, tours, or cheap flights? Those who are serious likely know a little about Costa Rica already and are looking for specific features and benefits, not general ones.

If you do this search on Google for Costa Rica Vacations, you’ll come up with ads and organic search results that have almost no words that capture or encourage a vacationer. Take a look yourself and note which if any of the words you see makes you want to book a vacation.  Here’s the Google Adwords results are the top of that page:

With Google ads, your text ad normally use the same keywords in the blue title line but in the other areas of the ad, you can pepper in other words that are intent related, which create more clicks.

The 1st ad uses “guided tour” and 8 days” which helps to screen out the wrong prospect. Unfortunately, these aren’t words that propel a sale with the right vacation seeker. It’s more like Caravan is saying “here’s our stuff.”  And the next ad below appeals to bargain hunters, but uses words such as Puerto Vallarta and Cancun. Those words aren’t associated with Costa Rica so they’re ability to boost Costa Rica vacationers buying intent is low.

Buyers need to see words that resonate with an actual strong intent to purchase. “Buy” is a good one, “book”, confirm, rainforest, volcanoes, beaches, condo, hotel, gallo pinto, organic coffee, tours, or wildlife might more closely align with real, sincere intent to book a vacation in Costa Rica. If this was an for retiring in Costa Rica, it would have entirely different topics and keyword phrases such as tax free, low cost of living, care free, new developments, waterfront, etc.

If we click through to the Caravan.com site, we land on a page devoid of the right words. The layout and pictures are sparse and you discover that Caravan is more about escorted tours – but the ad didn’t prepare us for that. Now it’s going to be tough for them to convert leads. That’s not everyone’s cup of tea, so you would expect them to have words that would help commit to learning about an escorted tour holiday and its benefits.

This landing page above fails miserably in all counts. Instead, the page have a generous, even lavish use of highly emotional and stimulating words that help the visitor draw a picture of their perfect guided tour visit of Costa Rica. Words such as “active volcano” and “spotted chicken” are two that evoke intent.

A volcano in Costa Rica is active, not dangerous, but still is a unique, once in a lifetime experience for most travellers and brings out the wild theme that enhances why people go to Costa Rica. The spotted chicken is Costa Rica’s favorite food dish.

Finding your High Intent Keywords

I have a list of high intent keywords for you below, yet realize that high buying intent keywords are related to the specific service or product being sought. So, yes “buy” is an okay high intent word, but the highest intent keywords are words that revolve around the key benefits they’re after.

Calmly consider all of the activities a person does before they buy — they check out key features, they check out reviews, they dig down for specific details, they do comparisons, and ask for specific products. Do not use these words below if your prospect doesn’t care about a discount, fast delivery. One last word: people rarely type in the word “buy” when searching — the fact they’re searching for fulfillment is their intent. Give them the words that resonate with their feelings of hope, satisfaction, and certainty that they’re on the right track.

It’s the momentum being built in your copy through impact, engagement, and

  • buy, purchase, order
  • discount
  • free delivery
  • deals
  • coupons
  • brand names
  • specific products
  • review
  • top, best
  • specific key features
  • quick, fast
  • city name, near cityname
  • fast, quick
  • easy financing
  • reduce
  • solution
  • tips
  • where can i buy
  • quotes
  • who has best
  • who has cheapest
  • all inclusive

If you’re running an ecommerce website, these high intent keywords can help solidify the sale so use them in your ads, your meta tags, page copy, heading, text anchor links, and even in your graphics. They’re the words that help pull visitors through the funnel and through the checkout process.

Good luck rewriting your copy to make it resonate with high intent keywords and other phrasing. Try these resource for more info:

Crazy Egg User Intent Guide: https://blog.crazyegg.com/2014/12/15/guide-user-intent/

Conversion XL guide to high converting keywords: https://conversionxl.com/finding-high-converting-ppc-keywords/

Neil Patel Adwords Hacks: https://neilpatel.com/2015/08/15/8-techniques-thatll-double-your-google-adwords-conversion-rate/

Unbounce Adwords and intent: https://unbounce.com/ppc/ignoring-user-intent-costs-you-money-in-adwords/

Nichehacks buyer intent keyword list:  https://nichehacks.com/buyer-keywords-list/