Review Neil Patel’s Quicksprout University “How to Determine The Commercial Intent of Keywords

I have decided to go to school on SEO. I am going to be studying and reviewing the best seo online courses and blogs from the top seo gurus. I am a big admirer of Neil Patel and his blog Quicksprout.com. All of his posts are packed full of actionable ideas for seo, traffic generation and general online marketing.

This is the first in a series of posts where I will be reviewing and summarizing the information I find in his Quicksprout University series. Here is what I learned from his video “How to Determine the Commercial Intent of Keywords.”

There are 2 Type of Keyword Searches Informational and Commercial Intent Keyword Searches

You basically have 2 types of keyword searches. One type of search is a search which is more geared towards gathering information. The example Neil Patel uses is in the web hosting industry. A keyword search such as “What is web hosting” would be an example of an informational type of search.

“What is Web Hosting” is an Example of an Informational Keyword Search”

The person who types in Google “what is web hosting” is generally not ready to purchase web hosting. He knows he needs it but he is not quite sure what it is yet so he is doing research.

However, if somebody searches for “Best web hosting” this person know what web hosting is, knows he needs it and now is ready to choose between web hosts. He is searching to buy. This type of keyword search is a “commercial intent” type of keyword.

“Best Web Hosting” is an Example of a Commercial Intent Type of Keyword Search

Other types of commercial intent keywords are review keywords such as in the web hosting example would be “web hosting reviews” or “review web hosting.” These people have decided they are ready to buy web hosting and now they want to pick the right web host for them. These type of keywords have “commercial internet.” “Hosting discount” and “Hosting coupon” also are serious commercial intent keyword searches.

Neil Patel suggests Googling your own brand and seeing if Google Suggest has some good ideas for commercial internet keywords.

For example I did a search for one of my websites classifiedsubmissions.com. Google Suggest is the area at the bottom of Google searches which give you some ideas on variations of your search terms.

As you see a good commercial intent keyword for my site classifiedsubmissions.com is “classified submissions review.” I should definitely do some work optimizing for these keywords.

Neil Patel suggest that if you want to take your commercial intent keyword search even farther to use a tool called Pro Media Suggestor. Unfortunately this tool no longer works. This is a tool where you type in your keywords and it gives you even more keyword suggestions than Google Suggest.

Thanks for the Warrior Forum I found an excellent alternative called Uber Suggest.

Just type your keywords into Uber Suggest and you might find even more commercial intent keywords that you might not have thought of. Then you can optimize some landing pages for those keywords.

Let’s just go back to the web hosting example because it is easier. The next step is to log into your Google Adwords account and go to the Google Keyword Planner.

Type in your keywords. In the example we are using we will just put in “wordpress hosting.” Make sure you target your market to your country because the commercial intent keywords vary greatly between countries.

Then click “Get Ideas.”

You want to make sure you are looking at the Keyword Ideas tab not the Adwords Group ideas tab.

You are actually looking for keywords with high competition. Because this competition figure represents the competition for ads on Google Adwords. Plus if you can rank for a keyword search with a average ppc you will get getting very valuable clicks to your landing page. So high competition and high CPC are good for our purposes.

You Want Keywords With High Competition and High CPC

The next step is to actually go to Google and Bing and type in your keywords. If you see lots of ads then there is good “commercial intent” for your keywords. You want people paying to advertise for your keywords. Remember, you are going to get the clicks for free.  If there are no ads this is a red flag.

If You Do Not See Any Ads For Your Keywords In Google or Bing This is a Red Flag

The goal is to find as many commercial intent keywords as possible for your niche and to optimize your site and landing pages for these keywords.

Here is the original video on Neil Patel’s Quicksprout University.

Please like, share and comment if you found this article helpful.

Thank you,

Matthew Meyer