Keyword research is still a vital part of SEO and digital marketing as a whole. But rather than focusing on the words and phrases themselves, we now need to determine the intent behind those words and make sure our content matches it.
Optimizing for keyword intent, therefore, is nothing more than delivering what the searcher is expecting to find when they enter their search engine query. But how do you know that? A lot of it depends on where they are at in the sales funnel. Figure that out, and you can easily send them to a page that matches the purposes of their search.
There are 5 basic types of searcher intent:
To see real-world scenarios for how these intents come into play, check out the blog post Stop the Keyword Obsession! Optimize for Visitor Intent Instead.