I have been thinking of better ways of figuring out what the ‘intent’ of the search visitor is. What has always been hard for me in search engine marketing is making that leap of faith when matching a keyword to a client’s product or offering. Is the customer really searching for what we are selling? For example, if the query is for “chemical warning labels”, is the searcher’s intent to buy warning labels for their hazardous chemicals or are they simply searching for information about warning labels on their child’s medicine?
I am going to try using some of the Google analytics parameters to help me evaluate that in some sort of quantitative sense as follows:
- Segment keywords by page view per visit
- Segment keywords by % exit ratio
My theory is that keywords that consistenly show a small page view/visit ratio (say <1.5:1 or so) probably are not relevant to my offerings. If the keyword intent was correct, why didnt they view more of the site? The same argument could be made with the exit ratio. If a keyword consistently shows a high exit ratio (assuming I have selected the most relevant landing page I can), then again, probably the searcher intent is not matching with my offer.
