Aligning Content with Intent Webinar Q&A

We had a great time hosting our webinar around SERP analysis last week. For those of you who weren’t able to attend, myself, Monique Johnson and Doug Antkowiak discussed how search engine results for a keyword reveal what Google understands about the intent behind the keyword.

Micro-Moments provide an easy framework to quantify what these intents are, and if you organize your keywords in this fashion, it provides you with powerful insights into the type of content audiences are looking for in a given moment. We provided some findings from research on these micro-moments across different industries and demonstrated a simple workflow you can use to create a dashboard for micro-moments in your own industry.
 
There were some great questions that we felt deserved some attention, so I’m going to address those here. 

1. Is there a way of doing this type of research without Data Cube? 

It is certainly possible, but it will require significantly more work and manual effort to filter through results. First, you’ll need a tool to do a mass pull of keywords and variations. This tool will need to show you search volumes as well as the presence of universal results appearing for the keywords.   There are point solutions that can do this, and depending on which one you use, you may need to do multiple pulls and compile keyword lists to get a comprehensive view of the market.

Data Cube understands semantic relationships and how keywords are related, so it eliminates a lot of that manual process. Data Cube also lets you combine filtering to create groups of keywords based on the characteristics appearing in the search result. If you are doing this manually, be sure that as you are pulling keywords, you’re filtering out those that could skew your results. For example, in the webinar, we were looking at school supplies. If you’re looking at keywords manually, you’ll need to scrub out irrelevant terms in your analysis (i.e., “Office supplies”). Once you have this research, you’ll need a place to track against the keywords over time. In the BrightEdge environment, you can create keyword groups and the platform will track the keywords, produce a share of voice analysis on them, and derive traffic and optimization insights automatically. Manually, or using a point solution, you would either need to write a script to repull the data or do it yourself.   

2. Where can I see micro-moments in the BrightEdge platform? 

There are a few ways you can dissect the moments. In the workflow we described, you would create keyword groups based on the universal results for each keyword. For example:

• I want to go moments – Keywords with a local 3 pack 
• I want to know Moments – Keywords with Quick Answers, People Also Ask, Knowledge Graph 
• I want to do Moments – Keywords with videos or images
• I want to buy – Keywords with shopping or carousel results

Once you filter and create a group for these (be sure to name and describe them accordingly), they are available in a number of places in the platform. You can look at share of voice across each moment in Competitive Analysis, individual keyword rankings and performance in Keyword Report, and forecast visibility lifts against each moment in Forecasting. The keyword groups designated to the micro-moments will also be available to you as dashboards via Story Builder. So, depending on how you need to view the data, once the groups are created, you’re able to configure however you need!

3. How could we understand the different moments across different industries?

If you are a BrightEdge customer, the good news is you may very well already have the data to help you do this! You could start with the keywords you’re already tracking and simply create new groups for them arranged by the universal results appearing for each (keywords can live in multiple groups). If you’re starting from scratch, you can begin your research by starting with head terms related to your business. For example, if you are an additive manufacturer, start with a broad term like ‘additive manufacturing’ or even ‘manufacturing’ and begin filtering by universal results to understand the moments that customers in that space are in. Your BrightEdge Customer Success Manager is standing by to help you discover more about the mindsets your customers are in!

4. Is it possible to analyze keywords by “I want to” moments instead of rank?

Absolutely. In fact, you can do this entirely within Data Cube without creating a keyword group. The easiest way to do it is filter by the universal elements that correspond to the moment you are interested in. As we mentioned in the webinar, you can combine filters so you can have multiple universal results represented in your result.

Data Cube will break down which keywords by competition and you can differentiate them by long tail and high value. Furthermore, you have the option of creating a dashboard view of these keywords (in my example, if I wanted a laser focus on “I want to go” moments related to school supplies, I could add them to a dashboard and track volumes over time). In this workflow, we’re not even factoring in where your website ranks. This could be particularly useful if you’re analyzing a new market where you have yet to build content and need to see what kinds of mindsets and moments audiences are in to guide what type of content needs to be created.   

5. For share of voice for micro-moments, can I configure different engines?

Yes! When you create a keyword group out of Data Cube, you’ll have the option to select which search engine (by location) you’d like to use. In fact, you can even use Google’s intent algorithm to discern the moments you want and then use another brands’ search engine to track rankings. You’ll be taken to this screen after you click “Track” which gives you a range of engines that can be tracked.

If your locale and engine you want to track is visible, you’ll be able to see Share of Voice Results for that keyword group.

Micro-moments have been a concept in search for a while, but they are as important as ever when we think about the mindsets behind search. We’re really excited to continue evangelizing them and find new and unique ways to use them to understand customer mindsets. If you’re interested in learning how BrightEdge could help you use search to understand your customers’ mindsets, reach out today to schedule a live demo.