User intent is a hotly discussed topic within content marketing right now. So much so that Semrush have just added it as a feature within their Keyword Magic tool.

Good thing then that Rejoice Ojiaku (SEO Manager at Incubeta) joined the Business as Unusual webinar to teach marketers about consumer behaviour and keyword mapping to user intent. You can watch the recording, and read the transcript, below. Enjoy!

Watch the recording

Read the transcript

Jon Payne:

Hi, welcome to Business As Unusual, the regular get together where we talk about stuff that can help you in your marketing, specifically focusing on digital stuff, often on search. And this issue is no exception. We have the rather wonderful Rejoice Ojiaku who I'm allowed to call Reji, which is lovely. Hi Reji.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Hi.

Jon Payne:

And Reji's joining us today and we're going to talk about... What? We are? Reji's mainly going to talk about consumer behaviour and keyword mapping for user intent. So that's where we're going.

Jon Payne:

We're delighted you've all joined us. For those of you who missed the beginning, because we do some preamble, we had a conversation about what we're doing for Christmas parties, but there's another thing I need to drop in for the people who will get this on watch again, which is Noisy Little Monkey.

Jon Payne:

We haven't put it out yet on job adverts, and when we do it'll be a bit clearer, but if you want to get to the front of the queue, keep an eye on our social channels because we're hiring at least one, probably two HubSpot managers or execs, depending on what we need. We had a terrible pandemic. Now business has come back with better clients, bigger clients. We are delighted and we need some more people. We've already hired four this last three months and we need another two.

Jon Payne:

So if you are a HubSpot expert and you have some agency experience, we would love to talk to you. Even if that agency experience is relatively short. Okay, enough of the job advert, let's start talking to the amazing Reji.

Jon Payne:

Reji, tell us about... so when I was looking at your bio, normally it's, "this is Reji. She does A. We are going to talk to her about X", but actually you've got two things in your bio. You've got your real job and then your kind of side hustle. So tell us what you do for a job. Tell us about your side hustle, as well. That sounds good, thank you.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

So my nine to five is as an SEO manager, mostly working with content side of things. So I do that with Incubeta. And my side hustle is co-founder and content lead for B-DigitalUK, which is a brand to promote the black demographic and educate about marketing, everything to do with digital marketing, about different channels. But mostly it was to target any D and I issues. We definitely want to bring more black people into the digital marketing space because it's not necessarily a route that a lot of students hear about to go down into. So that's why we wanted to fill that gap, promote, scream about different black talents, what we're doing and get the ball rolling from there.

Jon Payne:

Nice, nice. Well, we thank you for doing that because you're right. Most people in marketing look like me and that's not only bad just because I'm ugly, it's bad for a whole host of other reasons. So, brilliant, thank you for doing that stuff and helping out the sector in that way. I'm interested, before we jump into the discussion proper, to know how did you get into SEO? I'm always fascinated by how people fall into this weird business.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

So to be honest how I got into SEO was quite funny because I started... So after my masters, I did a graduate scheme. And the graduate scheme was meant to be rotational, so it was meant to move us from like different channels. So I started within SEO, the first channel, but I thought, "Okay, I'm going to be here for three months and then I'll move to PPC, and then... and at the end of the programme, I can decide." But I think at the company I was working for, they completely forgot the grads and forgot they was meant to be rotational. So I ended up staying there for six months and then after six months they said, "Oh, we're going to rotate you." And I was like, "No. No, thank you. And I really like SEO now. It's a bit late.", and especially at a time where I was kind of like the first point of contact with the clients, it just didn't make the sense for me to-

Jon Payne:

Wow.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Now train or for me to train the next person. So they scratched the programme and everyone got to stay where they were. And from there, I just continued for SEO.

Jon Payne:

Nice. Nice. And what was the thing that initially got you fascinated by it?

Rejoice Ojiaku:

I think with me with SEO, one thing that I really loved about it was the different layers. So SEO is just not one thing. There's so many components to it that you can fit right in.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

And I used to think, "Oh, you have to be great at everything." But then I do think if you look at yourself and what you like to do, some people are very analytical, technical. I think with me, because I loved content, I was really, really happy that there was a content section within SEO. And that's something I really like about the industry, that you can like other things that will actually benefit your SEO. So if you're very much into fashion or beauty, you can still go into SEO and apply it to those industries or apply it to Ecommerce. So the layering of SEO is so cool because it's not rigid. And I completely love that about SEO.

Jon Payne:

Yeah, it's funny. I didn't realise it until you started speaking about it, but that's kind of... I think that's the thing I love is there's... And if you are bored of this one thing today-

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Yeah.

Jon Payne:

As we all will get, you can go, "You know what, I'm going to park that because there's this thing over here which I thought I knew all about, but there's a whole-

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Yeah.

Jon Payne:

Section of it that I didn't know about".

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Absolutely.

Jon Payne:

Yeah. And do you use your masters in your job or was it in something totally unrelated?

Rejoice Ojiaku:

To be honest? I don't think I... When it comes to consumer behaviour, I would say my masters did help because it was covered as a module. But I think... Sometimes I think it was a waste of money, doing a marketing masters, but I think I did the marketing masters because I just wanted to do a masters and marketing was like the easiest topic I could pick and so I didn't want to do anything else, but I do think sometimes it helps to understand marketing from a general sense, but it's not all that applicable when it comes to SEO at all.

Jon Payne:

But at least it makes you stand apart in the bigger picture.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Yeah, absolutely.

Jon Payne:

And also for later, Claire, do edit out that bit about Reji taking the master's degree in marketing, because it was the easiest thing. We don't want future employers coming back and seeing that.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

True, true.

Jon Payne:

That's lovely. Right. Okay, cool. That's brilliant. The way people get into it is always so different, but we are a kind of breed, I think, the SEOs. And it's such a fascinating thing to be involved in. Long may it continue to evolve, which I think it probably will.

Jon Payne:

Right, so we should get onto sharing some cool stuff with these people and welcome people who are coming in a bit late. They know that I ramble on or get you to ramble on for 10 minutes. So people are still coming in. So that's delightful. Welcome latecomers. Welcome latecomers, yeah. I hope you feel bad because I've called you that, I didn't mean to, but we saw you come in, don't try and sneak in the seats around the back.

Jon Payne:

We're going to talk about user intent. And then we're going to talk about the evolution of search. And then we're going to talk about keyword mapping. I'm just so excited for this.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Same.

Jon Payne:

So interesting. So let's start off and because bare in mind that there'll be some people who know loads and there'll be some, it's like a [inaudible 00:08:04] audience, isn't it? Some people who know loads, and then some people who are like "Wow, this is a brave new world that I've stumbled upon." So talk to us about what is user intent?

Rejoice Ojiaku:

So the best way I think about user intent is essentially what... I guess it's asking yourself, "What is the intention a user has when entering any search term on Google or any search engine?". So user intent is basically finding out what's... Essentially, what does the user want? What do they actually want? And you have to look beyond the search term. You actually have to consider how humans behave and how complex humans are. Sometimes our intent are not that obvious, but user intent looks at the keyword or the search term and asking yourself, "What really do they actually want? What are they looking for?" So that's essentially what user intent is.

Jon Payne:

Yeah. Yeah. And is there a framework that you use or some examples that you can give us of how you've worked around that in the past?

Rejoice Ojiaku:

So I guess for me with user intent, I always think of about it in terms of... Keywords have sort of moved in different ways. So they used to be very straightforward and now they're more conversational. So if you think about all the what's, the how's, when's, all those things, those can actually tell you the intent of the user or the intent that the user is trying to convey.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

So I always look at a keyword and I always think, "Okay, from this keyword, what different intent categories can it fall under?" And some keywords can fall under more than one. And I think that way it can help you then understand, okay, I have these categories, these keywords fit here, what content can I draw out? What keywords can I draw out from these categories? And that way you can start creating keywords that fits that intent. It's kind of like a little spidergram, that kind of gearing off. And that's how I look at it, asking yourself to think, "What boxes can these keywords fit in?" And then deduce it from there.

Jon Payne:

And are those categories different for every client, or are there some that are kind standard?

Rejoice Ojiaku:

So there is some standard category. So everyone understands that keywords can evolve. So before it used to be informational, transactional, navigational, and commercial, and each of those categories means different things. So if we take transactional, for example, that's people wanting to make a direct purchase. That's people looking for things that they actually want to buy.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

If it's more navigational, you're thinking people might be looking for a particular location, a particular place. So those are the categories people are so used to, and you'll see these categories in places like SEMrush, Ahrefs, they still use those categories. But then, doing my research, I've found that the different type of categories that we can actually now think about, especially with the concepts of voice search coming in, voice search coming in kind of shifts the categories a little bit. So the ones I do like is the know, know simple, sites, device action, et cetera.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

So those new categories kind of allows you to now move from, you know, people used to search via desktop, but how about if people are searching by via "OK, Google" or Siri or all those things. That's why the device action was added as a category. So you then look at how your keywords can translate within those categories.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

So if people are saying things like... People can search "Asda", for example, just as a keyword, "Asda". Asda can fit into visit, because you might want to find the nearest Asda to you. Asda can fit into informational because you might want to find, or can fit into maybe a know because you might just want to find out more about Asda as a brand. So you see how those keywords can kind of slot into different things. So you kind of have to guess, or estimate, how are the users finding you and what is the best keyword to use and what's the best place to sort of put those keywords in what category.

Jon Payne:

Yeah. Wow. That's really cool. So, and you listed four or five key categories there. Could you just repeat those again for me because I didn't catch them.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Yeah, so the new categories I look at, we have "know" as a category, which is when people to want find that information about... A quick answer. Then we have "know simple" as a category and "know simple" is basically like a short answer to quick question. For example, a know simple search term would be, "How old is Beyonce?", just a straight up answer. You get a simple answer very quickly. Then you have a category of "do", "do" is you want to do something, you want to buy, download, instal. So you might see people search "Download Spotify". If you have an app, they might search "desktop download" and the name of the app. Then you have device action and device action is just simply adding the, "OK, Google", the "Hey, Siri", in front of that keyword. In general, every time I say "Hey, Siri", my phone reacts.

Jon Payne:

I have that whenever... But this won't do it when I say, "OK, Google", but I'll say, oh no, this time it did. But normally it does it when I say something vaguely related.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Yeah. So it's so frustrating having my phone next to me and saying "Hey, Siri" because it always reacts.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

You have a category of "site" and site is basically you're looking for a specific webpage or a specific website in general. And lastly, we have the category "visit" and that's when your users are trying to actually find a physical location of either, if you have a store or physical location of any sort of branches next to them.

Jon Payne:

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, okay. That's that's really cool. I love that. I love that. Is that something that you came up with? Is it coupled together from various different sources?

Rejoice Ojiaku:

I didn't come up with it, but I was definitely... I was just looking at user intent and I knew the old categories of informational, navigational, all those stuff and I came about... Some sites do to speak about "know", "know simple". So I was doing a bit more research like, Oh this new, I've never been heard of it." And it made a lot more sense to me than the old categories maybe because I do utilise like, "OK, Google, where is this?" And I always think about how those user intents get added in that way. And I think if we are speaking about search evolving, I think frameworks should evolve with it because that way we are kind of keeping up to things. So this is all research and I just kind of... And that's how I now understand keywords and user intent better with this new framework.

Jon Payne:

Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I love it. And you are right that there's a lot of stuff in search where people are saying stuffs moving fast and this is the new next thing and oh gosh, there's a roll out of another Black Friday update just before Black Friday. And we have a tendency to rush into panics about these lot of sort of spiky things.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Yeah.

Jon Payne:

But when you talk about the evolution of search, it feels like actually that's much more realistic in terms of how it works, particularly if we're talking about Google, but obviously there are other agents, but Google being the one... Google is still listening to me. I just need to... It can't find results for that last sentence. But yeah, it moves fast, but it also moves slow and it's careful about making sure it retains its-

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Absolutely.

Jon Payne:

Retains all of that money that's just pouring into alphabet.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Yeah.

Jon Payne:

So I think you are evolving your tools and your thinking and your framework and your processes. That's absolutely just a brilliant way of putting it. Thank you. And my eloquent thanks went on for about 20 minutes with loads of arms. So I apologise for wasting your air time.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

It's okay.

Jon Payne:

Are we going to come back to whether or not you have any useful links where we could find more about that?

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jon Payne:

Whether it's something that we just follow you for on Twitter or whatever, and everybody please feel free to throw questions in the chat as we go.

Jon Payne:

We'll save them up for the end if you want, but that will give Reji and I longer to just sit and look at each other in silence while we've wait for those questions to start. So if you've already broken the seal... Thank you, Julianne Boyce. If you've already broken that seal, then it makes it easier for us to start moving. So actually... Oh, so Joyce has asked a good question, for which you can dig a hole for yourself, I suspect.

Jon Payne:

As an old white guy in search, I can assure you five years ago, I was telling everybody that voice search wasn't the next thing, it was the fucking only thing. And you'd better be ready for it because it's completely changed the landscape.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Yeah.

Jon Payne:

And I'm not entirely sure that I was correct. In fact, I'd go so far as to say, I think I may have been incorrect along with every other old white guy in search. But Joyce has asked, "Do you think that voice will become the most dominant?"

Rejoice Ojiaku:

I don't think it'll become the most dominant. I think people still love to search with their phones. But I think if we consider things such as how we are making our homes very more gadgety with technology...

Jon Payne:

Of course.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Then we have to consider things like that. Because for example, if you think about... I take me, for example, if I want to find that information, let's say I'm in the kitchen, cooking. I wouldn't go and get my phone. Especially if I have a home pod, I can just say, "Hey, Siri", and then ask that question.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

So you have to think about the different scenarios and environments your users are going to be in when they are searching. Some people search on the go through their AirPods and they ask Google or ask Siri everything. So I don't think it'll be dominant but I do think we have, as marketing, we have to account for every scenario our customers are going to be in to find us and we can't afford to leave those gaps. We have to be able to target that as best as we could. So although voice is growing, it's something that I thought is very much here to stay, but we are not going to lose the everyday desktop searching or searching on your mobile. But if we are not incorporating voice search, we're really losing out.

Jon Payne:

Yeah. Yeah. Joyce, Julianne, I need to apologise because I've called you Joyce several times because I'm conflating your first name and your last name and you're Julianne. Right, thank you.

Jon Payne:

We've got a couple of others actually before we move on to how is search evolving. But I think we're kind of moving into that as we're talking about this. So Andy's asked, "Do you think that personas change intent> i.e different personas will mean or may be looking for different things with the same searches" It's kind of where you were going with the Asda stuff, I guess.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Yes, yes. Personas a hundred percent will change intent and then I think for me, if we are looking at our buyers persona, I think creating a buyers persona is so useful because then you can... You're sort of targeting your buyers pain points and you're targeting areas that they are kind of very finicky about. So if you understand different pain points, what motivates your consumers, you will understand how they will search and what key terms they will use.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

So let's take a student and a chef, for example, two different personas, two different pain points in general. Now, if we're looking at if a chef ever uses the key term "chicken", for example, they might be trying to do more of a "know" category because they might want to find chicken recipes. They might want to find chicken dishes that they can try.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

If we are looking at a student and in their key word they use term "chicken", they actually might want the nearest chicken shop or to buy a box of chicken. So they might be more transactional if we're using the old category. So you have to understand your buyer's persona. It's one of the most important things that outlines different type of consumers for your business, because your business won't have the same type of consumers. And each consumer will differ based on age, gender and all this and even location and all these different things.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

And I think location is great because location feeds into linguistics for us. So how I search as a Londoner, I might not search if I was in Nigeria searching. Linguistics are different and how I interpret slang, sometimes people do search in slang-

Jon Payne:

Yeah.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Because they don't know any other words. To understand your buyers persona will really give you better clarity about the kind of keywords and how they research, what language or what sentence structure they'll search in. That way you can start targeting and mapping to what content to provide or what intent they might actually mean. So yeah, buyers persona is key.

Jon Payne:

Yeah. Yeah. Brilliant, brilliant. Oh, explained better than most, particularly with the slang stuff. You forget that most of us will include slang in our natural language. And the more we are searching with conversational stuff, be that typed or spoken, we're going to get there.

Jon Payne:

You're getting some love in the chat, obviously. We have some other questions which Azim and Joanne are throwing in so thanks very much. Molly Nicholson is sharing some good stuff, as was Jane. Although Molly's might be newer. That's what that looks like to me. Thanks everybody for throwing stuff in.

Jon Payne:

Right. So, Claire, hopefully you're grabbing those questions that I haven't asked Reji and we'll come back to them. We are kind of moving into the evolution of search, you're good at this. I don't know why I'm talking. I'm absolutely wasted here. I'm wasted? I am a waste being here.

Jon Payne:

So you were already talking about the evolution of search and is there other stuff that we need to consider? Like everybody was going crazy about BERT and all of that kind of stuff. Is there stuff that we need to consider that's coming down from Google or what are you thinking on that?

Rejoice Ojiaku:

I honestly think, over time, we'll start to see Google utilise BERTs in a different way. But one thing I'm very interested in, that I was interested in, is the concept of virtual reality and the concept of the Metaverse, because it's all about virtual reality, you deal with all of that. And I was thinking will brands in the future utilise virtual reality? And I remember that there was a game called Second Life and a lot of brands tend to advertise through Second Life because they can make it quite realistic. So how would intent work in virtual reality? And it's something that I haven't quite figured out yet, but it's so interesting- [crosstalk 00:23:51]

Jon Payne:

Oh, come on.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

So interesting if you think about it, because would intent slightly change? Because I think with virtual reality now you can sometimes speak through it. So maybe as brands we'll be able to kind of... Or as marketers, we'll be able to have a clearer definition of what the intent is for the users. Because now you are... We'll probably see more long tail keywords than we do with desktop because now we're speaking, we're interacting. So I wonder how brands would then take that and create content from the data they can find in virtual realities. Is there a way we can track it? How many times will a person say a particular brand name or brand term that you as a brand can use and say, "Okay, this week, so many people were asking about this particular topic. Should we create this on my landing pages?" So it's a fascinating thing. I haven't quite worked it out, how intent will fit in virtual reality, but I am so ready to see where that goes.

Jon Payne:

You answered a question that was thrown up by Julianne in the chat.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Oh really? [crosstalk 00:25:02].

Jon Payne:

Yeah. Yeah. She... Well I didn't repeat it. You just answered it because you're good at this shit.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Yay.

Jon Payne:

Yeah, and we are like... People are already trying to pass language and sentiment in their searches and go "Well, is that a good sentiment or a bad sentiment?" And. It's never going to be easy and it's never going to be done.

Jon Payne:

But as you were talking about that I was thinking, "Wow, we're going to start to have to analyse body language when they're saying these brand names or when they're asking these things."

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Yeah.

Jon Payne:

Which is a hot legal layer upon layer here.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Yeah, there's a lot more to pick up on and I think it'll go beyond linguistics. And then you have to think about it. And I'm just reading the comments and someone did make a great point that it wouldn't necessarily be personas, but it's more so real life.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

But I do think you can start from a basis of having a persona, even though with virtual reality, it is real life, but you can start... You can actually create what type of people do you think your brand will resonate with and then you can compare it to that virtual reality and what you're finding. Because of the personas, you have to always adjust it, because again, people still evolve. So one person's persona today might not be the same persona next week or the year after. So virtual reality can actually allow us, in real time, to see how personas evolve over time, and therefore we'll see how intent is evolving with a particular persona. Because my pain points today might fit your persona for this month, but I might not have the same pain points next month. So understanding how my intent can actually evolve because intents do change over time-

Jon Payne:

Yeah.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Then virtual reality would kind of allow us to see that in real time and, I think, allow us to be more responsive as marketers, when creating content or formulating content ideas, we are definitely way more responsive because we are actually seeing this play out in another... different Metaverse, for example. Yeah.

Jon Payne:

Yeah, yeah. And you're right. I'm guilty of it and I'm sure a lot of people watching this are guilty of it, which is, well, I did my buyer personas and I've got their five stages of my buyer's journey. You're right. Their pain points are not those precise points. They're always going to be... They're much more of a wave than a point in time. Yeah, really cool. We are fast. Screaming through time, which is good. You can tell this is a good chat because I'm just... Every time I look at my clock, I'm like that, we're going to be out of time in about [crosstalk 00:27:45], so this is, this is brilliant.

Jon Payne:

So talk to us about keyword mapping. Yeah. What components should we consider?

Rejoice Ojiaku:

With keyword mapping, so for me, one of the main components I think should be top is relevancy. I think some marketers are so bogged down with search volume. Search volume is great, it's really good, awesome stuff. But relevancy will actually allow you to be more accurate with the intent of your user. And the reason why I say you should look at relevancy over search volume is because if we look at the difference between short tail versus long tail, long tail keywords tend to be lower in search volume, but they tend to be quite specific in intent.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Again, like I said earlier, because people are using the what's, the when's, the how's, the how to's and all those things. So we can actually identify intent faster. So the components I will look at for keyword mapping would be relevancy, short tail versus long tail. Again, long tail being the accurate answer and usefulness.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

And the reason why I say usefulness is so you, as a brand, get into the habit of creating useful content because you have matched the keywords accurately to the intent. There's no point creating content if it's not answering the intent.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

If I am a user and I want content because I'm trying to purchase and buy, there's no point you giving me so many information about the product. I probably won't read it because I know what I want to buy, and I'm using this keyword to purchase. So you have to be able to understand that. And that's why I think the main components: usefulness, relevancy, long tail keywords. Those are the three top components I think you should use when you're mapping out your keywords.

Jon Payne:

Brilliant. But how do you sell that to a client or to a marketing team? [crosstalk 00:29:50]

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Don't do this. I think, how to sell it to a client... I think, sometimes, back it up with data, which is why I'm really happy SEMrush was able to add the intent to keywords because-

Jon Payne:

Yeah.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

What I love is you can see that one keyword has three intents. So you can start selling that, and you can start saying, "Although this keyword has three intents, for example, this is the landing page it's pointing to, is that the relevant landing page of the keyword that we want? Is that what we actually want for the user?"

Rejoice Ojiaku:

So if you're selling stuff with data and you're sharing that, "Hey, listen, you're mapping these keywords to this content. Well, that content is not really fitting the intent that people want. How are we looking at a transactional, for example, keyword, but we've created a whole informational page?"

Jon Payne:

Yeah.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

That doesn't make sense. So if your clients are seeing that, "Hang on, yeah. You're actually quite right", They're more eager to listen, everything, clients love data. So use the data you have, honestly, it's absolutely brilliant. And give them alternatives to what that keyword can mean when it comes to intent. Give them alternatives to how to create content. I'm not going to go too much how to map keywords to content, because that's my talk for the Women In Tech SEO, but-

Jon Payne:

Oh, let's not blow that gap. Keep that powder dry.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

But I would say absolutely back your stuff in data and show the clients the different variations of intents that that keyword can fit into.

Jon Payne:

Yeah, yeah. I'm definitely going to need a pirate copy of the Review of Women in Tech SEO talk because I'm not normally allowed in. I don't know why. I do know why, obviously.

Jon Payne:

Okay. Oh, I love that. I love that. I think when you were talking with Claire, you talked about maybe the different intent... Or how you can lever intent using SERP features.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Oh yeah.

Jon Payne:

Are you talking about snippets or shopping or what? How does that work?

Rejoice Ojiaku:

So, I think for me, with SERP features, so we definitely have... So different SERP features we know we have, we have news boxes, we have image patterns, all those things. And I guess you can start off with the intent that you want. So let's look at two intents if we take "know" and "know simple", for example, different keywords can sort trigger different SERP features.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

So knowing that, for example, "know simple" is things that we want to quickly know an answer to. So whether you are selling a software tool, that is, let's just say, a project management software tool. Knowing that that keyword, "project management tool", can be a keyword, that can ignite a Google's carousel because Google tend to just bring a carousel of different tools that you can use. And that way, if you know that and you're accurately using that keywords within your website or your brand, then yeah, you'll kind of have more of a inclination to target those SERP features. I wouldn't be too focused on SERP features, but there is a way that intent can feed into it.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

For example, if we take another keyword, I don't know, "10 Downing Street", you want to know about 10 Downing Street and it's more of a "know" query. That can come in the form of a news box, and in quick information at the top. So, yeah, so all of these things can actually help you compliment your SERP features. And I really push on the word compliment. You don't want to do it because you want to target those, but it is a compliment, is an extra boost. But even if you don't have that boost, you can still rank, regardless of those SERP features.

Jon Payne:

Yeah.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

So don't continue to focus on trying to get those, but let it compliment your content, rather than it being the driving force to your content.

Jon Payne:

Strong agree, strong agree. We may well, I mean, check it. Search for "is SEO bullshit?" on Google, and I think we have an answer box, or often we do, or sometimes it moves, but it's probably there today is my guess because I was looking the other day like, "Oh wow". Just because I was trying to look for someone else's thing and our thing was there. It doesn't drive any traffic. Because the intent is "Is SEO bullshit?", and broadly speaking, yes is the answer.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Yeah, so-

Jon Payne:

There's some nuance here and you can really get into it, but-

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Yeah, SERP features can really hinder you. It can hinder traffic.

Jon Payne:

Yeah.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

I think for me, you want your users to actually go on your website because that's how people actually explore your site. So in as much as SERP features is great, I don't think we should always focus on it as marketers. It's nice to have, but let's focus on actually generating great content and answering the questions and answering the intent that our users want so they can actually go on the page and it can either result to conversions, result to traffic, increase of traffic. You actually want people to go into your website.

Jon Payne:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's funny. And you can get those answer boxes that drive tonnes of traffic.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Yeah.

Jon Payne:

And you're like. And normally, maybe it's because it's the way we do it, maybe I'm putting our bias on it. I don't know what you see, but we often... The ones you don't expect to drive traffic, drive masses of traffic. And then the ones you think, "Oh, got an answer box. Can't wait to tell the client", and then you're like that, "Oh, I probably won't tell the client because we've had one visit in like three months".

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Yeah.

Jon Payne:

So that page isn't in referencing.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Yeah, absolutely.

Jon Payne:

Yeah. Okay. And so I guess the question is are there times when... What sort of businesses, rather, would go for... Or what your customers would go for, could win at some of those shorter tail searches? Do you get many of those where you can go, "Hey, let's go for one or two words. We know it's got three or four intents. We can win it and answer it". Or is it always more to a medium and long tail?

Rejoice Ojiaku:

I think the clients who do quite well personally, like shorter tail end key words to kind of know the intent, tend to be Ecommerce sites or a lot of retail sites because, especially when consumers are trying to compare one product to another, so those intent are very much obvious for a lot of Ecommerce sites. So if we are looking at, let's say you're a jewellery maker or you sell skincare, whatever it is, you are able to kind of know the intent of your users depending on very short tail keywords. So they can say, I don't know, "toner versus primer", that's very short, but you understand, they are trying to compare the two or they're trying to compare two products. And that can always again be informational and informational can then lead to purchase or it can be... I don't know, that's more commercial, that can then lead to purchase.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

So a lot of retail owners tend to do quite well with commercial intent because it's very obvious what your consumer is trying to look for. They either want to either investigate the product or investigate a service. Those keywords that are tend to be short tail, but it's much easier. If you work in a FinTech space, it would be quite difficult to use commercial intent. But I think a lot of FinTech companies might look at, you know, a lot of their consumers might be more informational because you want to find out more about their processes, about their services. So you see a lot more informational intent with them or a lot more "know", "know simple" queries with them. So I think you have to look at your industry and think "What's the likelihood intent?", that doesn't mean that would always be the intent, but what's the likelihood intent that we might find based on the kind of service and products we offer.

Jon Payne:

Yeah, yeah. Wow. That never stops, does it? That goes on forever, once you start examining that stuff.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Yeah.

Jon Payne:

So I'm conscious that I don't want to go in and start poking about in stuff that you've got prepared for Harij because I don't want her to come around and give me a kick in. Because you know, she's so violent. Obviously, just for the sake of clarity, easily the nicest person at [inaudible 00:38:43].

Jon Payne:

So a question I've got for you is, if I'm thinking about Christmas or maybe new year, because I think it's probably a bit late for Christmas. And I'm thinking about new year and all that kind of stuff, how might I think about, let's say... any industry, but maybe retail is a nice, easy one. And I'm retailing bikes, for instance, by the way, I don't work for any bike retailers, so this isn't me getting free consultancy off of Reji. Could you give us some quick examples of different intents around retail in the new year maybe? Or if you've got a different sector that you, that you could [crosstalk 00:39:26].

Rejoice Ojiaku:

So retail in the new year, in the new year or Christmas time, I think in the intent will always be "do" because people know what they want to buy.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

So there's a lot of either "buy jewellery gifts", "buy bicycles" or "bicycles", "affordable bicycles", "cheap bicycles", all those things. So a lot of it is the intent to actually purchase. Unless you have the one off user, who's trying to do their investigation in Googles, but during Christmas time everyone's very busy. So they just want to purchase. So you start to see a lot of keywords around purchase intent in terms of them trying to buy or download. You might also see a lot of things around visits because people want to go to physical locations. So you'll start to might see, I don't know, "Currys near me", all those kind of keywords. So definitely look out and I'm glad you pointed it out, that intent can change based on seasons.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

So seasonal fluctuations is around there. So Valentine's day, Christmas times, all those things might have similar intent because people are trying to buy and sometimes even up to the lead up for Christmas, you might start to see a lot of "know" queries.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

They might want to find information about particular products. You might start to see this around the Septembers, October, because people are trying to work out what to get. So people might be searching about if the skincare... Oh, the best skincare for acne, that's more long tail because they're trying to find out more information. And then during the Christmas time you mind people get very specific in the "do" and the "visits" kind of keyword. So that's how you can kind of play it off. And I think that's how I naturally would play it off and think about it.

Jon Payne:

Yeah. And it's interesting, isn't it? Because often what happens is the board or the senior team, when they're not marketers, or particularly if they're finance people, not that I've got anything against them, but sometimes they aren't particularly imaginative, where they look back and they just look at data. The instructions that the marketing team get that they maybe hand onto their agency or they hand onto their in-house is: these are the keywords at work, these are the search terms at work, just go after these.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Yeah.

Jon Payne:

And it's useful to remember actually, we do need the "know" ones and go back to some of the advice you were giving earlier about, okay, this is how I can go back and push back and go,

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Yeah.

Jon Payne:

"Okay. No, we still need the 'know' ones because, alright, we didn't get as many sales in September and October, but that's because not everyone is losing their mind."

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Absolutely, absolutely. And I think one key thing, I think, for me to highlight would be, this is a great time to repurpose content around times like Black Friday, Christmas, because I think intent has shifted. And if intent has shifted from the people were at the "know" stage of the query, intent now will shift to now they're trying to purchase. So if you can repurpose the content you made for that intent, just repurpose it to now push for those queries. And now you re-adding new key terms or new search terms as well.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

So don't think that because you have this new intent at a random time in November, December, you have to create a whole new content. Look at what you have. Can you repurpose something with the new search terms you're finding that's fitting this intent? Or can you utilise it to drive, maybe improve your internal linkage, and now starting to point to these pages that you've now optimised for this intent. I think that's how you can start to look at content and make user intent work for you as a brand. And that way you're not always bogged down about "What do we need to create? What content should we look at?", Sometimes just look at what you have and just repurpose that with new intent in mind.

Jon Payne:

Yeah, yeah. Cool, cool. Wow. That was an excellent whirlwind. We have screamed through our 40 odd minutes of chatter.

Jon Payne:

I think there were some questions that I need to roll back to that maybe we didn't cover, although your second site is very good at picking them up as we went by. Dibs, if you want to put them in the chat again, or shout at me through the door, or whatever, I'm actually looking at her over there, typing furiously.

Jon Payne:

So let me roll back now, here we go. Here's another message. Okay. Actually, yeah. This is one from Molly, I think. Molly Nicholson. Molly Nicholson, did I notice that you were in Minnesota? Oh, Minneapolis. Because if you are, that's really cool because your initials are the state you're in. And that just pleases me, ah, MN from MN. Just absolutely loving it. Prizes for anybody who can remember what the strap line for the state is for Minnesota. I can't remember.

Jon Payne:

Anyway, you know, the thing you see on the number plate, anyway, doesn't matter. Let me focus back on. Reji, do you have a resource that you can share, or that you know of, for a keyword mapping template? Or should we just get people to come along to your talk at Women in Tech SEO?

Rejoice Ojiaku:

One, yes, come along to the talk at Women in Tech SEO. I don't have a resource in terms of keyword mapping that I can think of. I do know someone did share it, I just can't remember it. But if you reach out to me afterwards, I'm happy to find it and share it with you but I just can't think of a keyboard mapping template off the top of my head.

Jon Payne:

Well, that's absolutely ruined this whole thing.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Oh, darn.

Jon Payne:

We were doing so well. Nevermind, we'll just have to pick up the scratch from here. So where would we find you on Twitter if we were going to follow you for that kind of stuff?

Rejoice Ojiaku:

So on Twitter, RejiYates, I think they were right, yeah. And on LinkedIn it's Rejoice Ojiaku. I'm very quick to respond to any DMs so please reach out to me there and I'll share any sort of resource I find around keyword mapping templates that I come across.

Jon Payne:

Cool, and I think you may have mentioned them already, but we'll see, any tools that you would recommend? What's in your go-to toolbox?

Rejoice Ojiaku:

SEMrush 100%, I don't know,

Jon Payne:

Of course.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

I just love it. Ahrefs is really good, the keyword explorer, especially, really, really good for keywords. Those are the two I always use in terms trying to work out intent as well. Yeah, I think those two, Ahrefs and SEMrush are amazing to work with.

Jon Payne:

Yeah, yeah. SEMrush has just come on in such leaps and bounds. Cool. Excellent. I think we are done because you answered the questions as we went, so we were just... You killed it. So why don't we... Oh, no, hang on. There's a Q and A. If this is just like, "How does John-"

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Oh, yeah?

Jon Payne:

Yeah, there is. "How does John do his hair?". It might be that we've already covered it. What's your top resource for the "know", "know simple", "do", "device action", "site" and "visit" framework?

Rejoice Ojiaku:

I look at Search Engine Journal, spoke about it as well. They spoke about the "know", "know simple".

Jon Payne:

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

I'm more than happy... I do have links that I saved when doing the research. I'm more than happy if... I'll send them to Claire and she can distribute it out because some of those really go into it in terms of the different framework for that.

Jon Payne:

Oh, that would be great.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Yeah.

Jon Payne:

Man, that'd be brilliant. Because we'll send out a copy of the video.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Awesome, yeah.

Jon Payne:

And yeah, anybody who's booked on will get a copy of the video because often people don't come, but watch the video later. So yeah, having that will be really useful. Oh, Azin said, "How do you think consumer behaviour has changed during the pandemic?" Keep it light, Azin.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

So I think... So consumer behaviour, I think people have become very transactional. Because we had to work from home, a lot of it is transactional in terms of people starting to deliver groceries to your homes or people starting to look at different ways of buying. And everyone was mostly on desktop or their phones.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

So I think how we now interact with brands have completely changed because of the dynamics. And it's now... A lot of us now require brands to be quite responsive in the content they provide us. So I think we have now shifted, where we used to be the kind of people to wait and sift around. But now there's an expectation for marketers to provide the information then and there. So you kind of have to be ready.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

And I think, if anything, it's kind of changed how we should forward think a little bit. Obviously no one could predict the pandemic, but if you look at buying habits and how that's changed, people went from awareness for some information and just leaped all the way to purchase because, "Hey, I know what I'm going to buy".

Rejoice Ojiaku:

And people start to do a lot more comparisons now online. So you're starting to see keywords such as "this versus that", or "which one is best", all those kind of keywords. So if you understand that as a marketer, I think you can then forward plan how you think about where that intent will fit. And if you understand now that based on how we buy things, intent is also shifting. So maybe split out, if you're facing a content calendar, for example, split out the years and look at it from a quarter perspective. Will this intent remain the same the next quarter? Will this remain the same in the next quarter? Because the pandemic has showed us that we can shift. We can all Google just for information. And in the next month we all just want to buy because something went viral, which is ridiculous.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

And another point to highlight is viral products I think are the worst. Viral products are the worst. During the pandemic TikTok made something viral, TikTok made... Twitter's made this product viral, but if you're a retailer, that's a nightmare because one week no one was buying anything or no one was going to our website and the next week it's that.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

But what I want to say is don't get lost in that. Still focus on the intent that people have before it went viral. Because afterwards there's always going to be a decline and people start going back to how they search. So people might quickly shift from, "Oh, we wanted to investigate. We are in the 'know simple' era." Now we've quickly in the space of a week, we're now in "do". Still focus on "know simple" because after the "do" section goes, you still have to continue to provide content that will feed that query.

Jon Payne:

Yeah, yeah. Because we're never done. Well, maybe we will be, but that will be after the next series of pandemics and eventual global warming to our imminent deaths.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Absolutely. Awesome.

Jon Payne:

But then we won't need to sell anything at that point.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Yeah.

Jon Payne:

We'll just be bartering, Reji, it's been an absolute delight and I'm really looking forward to when you do a course or a book or something, because it feels like you've got a real massive understanding of this and really sophisticated understanding. There are so many people like me in this world who know that much about it and you seem to have a depth that is beyond other people's and it's been a real delight, as a result. Someone's shouting something at you. Someone's shouting at me. Oh, my question is important. What was your question? Joanne? Or, Joyce?

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Oh, who's my favourite singer? Oh, I've got a few. I've got a few. Obviously Beyonce, obviously Beyonce.

Jon Payne:

Obvs.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

But I definitely love... If you want a new person or vocalist look at... What is her name? Yebba. Oh my, oh my goodness. If you... Just listen to Yebba, she's amazing. And I'm loving Adele because she's back, and yeah. So Beyonce, Yebba and Adele.

Jon Payne:

Okay, okay. I'm going to throw on the end there. Darryl Pandy. Love Can't Turn Around from the eighties, which I stumbled across again this morning, and it's made my whole week, but not quite as good as yours. But man, boy can wail.

Jon Payne:

Thanks so much, Reji. We'll wave goodbye and thanks for your time. You're getting lots of thanks in the chat and we'll see you next time, everybody. Thanks. Bye bye.

Rejoice Ojiaku:

Thank you.