Stand out and survive by focusing on user intent

Melissa says: “With AI rewriting the rules of search, content that zeroes in on real user intent is the only content that will stand out and survive.”

How do you establish the user intent to begin with?

“You have to look at the problem you're trying to solve.

Every piece of content you create should start from that place. If you can't answer that question, you should not be writing that piece of content – whether the keywords tell you to or not.”

How do you define the different stages of the user journey?

“I focus on the core three: the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel.

There's nuance in there, depending on your industry and niche, and you can adjust as needed. However, with AI search, AI Mode, and everything else rolling out, you can really focus on those three buckets – with AI search dominating that top-of-funnel space.”

What is the user typically doing at each stage of the funnel nowadays?

“Top-of-funnel is typically a user starting with some big picture question or looking for a problem to solve. They're asking ‘how/why/what’ questions. They're not necessarily sure that they need to buy something or act yet. They're just trying to figure out, is this a real problem or not?

Middle-of-funnel is where they're scratching their head now, and they're thinking, ‘I know what the problem is, and I kind of know what the solution is, but do I need to act? Do I need to buy something? Am I still deciding?’ This is where they're learning what products or services are out there, and whether or not they can tackle the problem themselves.

Bottom-of-funnel is where they act. This is where they've decided that they potentially need a product or a service to help them solve their problem. That's where they're jumping in to fill out a form, contact you, or pick up the phone.”

What content would you advise for meeting the intent at each stage of the funnel?

“At top-of-funnel, it is purely informational content: blog posts, guides, how-to posts, video tutorials, etc. This is the kind of content designed for someone who doesn't know if they can solve their problem or not; they're looking for that solution first.

How-tos and informational content become very important for building that first stage of trust, before they've decided whether they need more information or they need help.

Middle-of-funnel can be a little bit more nuanced. I’ll use a home services client as an example. At this stage of the game, if your toilet is clogged and you don't know how to fix that, you might be able to find an informational guide or a video that walks you through that. However, trying to fix that problem yourself might give you a little bit of anxiety. Maybe you have a difficult plumbing setup.

The middle-of-funnel content is where you fill in those gaps. Where your first top-of-funnel piece is giving a comprehensive overview of what the solution is, your middle-of-funnel is filling in the gaps: those questions and those doubts that someone might have about solving their own problem.

Bottom-of-funnel really depends on your niche. This can be a straight-up old-fashioned service page/product page that solves the problem or the obstacles to that problem that someone was stuck in the middle of the funnel for.

This is where you are selling yourself as the solution, instead of handing them off to do it themselves or go with a competitor. It can be everything from videos talking about what you do and why you're that solution to a blog post detailing that, and showing why you're the best of the best.

It can also just be an old-fashioned landing page that we know converts at that stage.”

What is AI doing that's changing the game so much?

“From what we're seeing, with eroding search results in Google in particular over the last couple of months, we know that there is a shift here. People are choosing to stop their informational search at AI overviews.

As we get more data with AI Mode specifically, in Google search, we're probably also going to see that detract from clicks through to a website. We also have all the other platforms out there: ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and who knows what else is going to pop up in the future. These platforms are where people are going.

So far, it’s not that 100% of first search is going to AI, but it's starting to take a chunk out of our organic search results. On those platforms, people are asking much more long tail questions than we've ever seen with keywords in organic search. They're asking paragraphs that say, ‘This is my problem, and these are all the details of my problem.’

To me, this isn't necessarily just a shift from organic search to AI. This is a shift in how we see and use the top-of-funnel to guide people from these platforms and search features to that middle and bottom-of-funnel content on actual websites and other platforms.”

How do you discover the actual question that a user is asking and the problem they're trying to solve?

“We have a gold mine of data out there, from search itself and what people are clicking on (which we can see in Google Search Console) and where they're landing (which we can see through GA4). Using tools like Majestic, you can also find out where those long tail queries are coming from. Sometimes, that gives us immediate guidance on where we can fill gaps.

Beyond that, we have TikTok, YouTube, Instagram Reels, and Reddit. Reddit is a gold mine of people asking questions that sometimes they don't go to search for, or they're embarrassed to ask about a problem they're having.

On top of that, my biggest tip for finding ways to match those problems to solutions, and create content with search intent, is talking to your team internally. What questions are clients and customers asking? When they call you, what is their first pain point? That is another gold mine that a lot of companies overlook.”

How do you anticipate the follow-up questions to what you're optimizing for, and keep the user on your site?

“Sometimes, you have to guess. You have to put yourself in the shoes of that person asking that question.

So much of our marketing prowess starts with keywords and keyword research. With what's shifting with AI right now, keywords are not going to be the primary focus much longer when it comes to answering questions like this and going down those rabbit holes.

You can Google the problem to get all the obvious solutions, but we need to start thinking more as human beings and not marketers when we're trying to figure out how to fill those gaps.

For some questions, it’s going to be very easy to come up with different scenarios and subtopics to support that. However, depending on what that problem is, it can get much harder. In those cases, you may need to post big picture content around your initial search intent and then start seeing the queries that come to that page or blog post, and start building around that as well.”

How do you know how precise to be and what elements to include in your content?

“What we know so far about AI search is that citations and internal linking are all important signals – not only for how AI platforms connect the dots within themselves, but they are also just good SEO practices.

I stick to old-school thinking here. When you have a topic, you do not need to talk about every little nuance of that topic. You want to hyper-focus on answering that question from the get-go – just like an AI would spit out an answer to that singular question before somebody starts asking follow-ups.

When you're structuring your content, it's not necessarily about having all of the external sources and real-world examples in there; it's about having the best. What has an emotional resonance with someone who might land on that page? We don't necessarily have to stick in everything, but we want to try to find what will actually connect with that audience.

Then, if AI pulls up that answer and someone sees that, they're getting that gut punch where something emotional overtakes them, and that connects them to that piece. You want to focus on what's going to make that emotional connection, and make it stick with someone that's reading that piece of content.”

When you optimize for humans, will you naturally be optimizing for algorithms as well?

“It really depends on what your research and your outline start with. We know that there are SEO best practices for writing – which, right now, we assume are the best practices for AI. We're still trying to figure out the nuance of what the differences and similarities are.

Realistically, if you're starting with a strong outline, you are already covering your SEO best practices and what you should be doing: your title tags, meta descriptions, header structure, etc. From there, you're integrating your keyword targeting just like you would with anything else.

The difference is that you want to mirror the analytical side of writing, which a lot of SEO content is: we’re focussing on a keyword and we're trying to hit all those boxes that Google likes to see. You want to take that and pair it with a more creative nature, and really look at how you use language to connect that (tied with those best practices) doesn't make it seem like something out of science fiction that a robot wrote.

That’s not just because AI might be helping you with it, but we sometimes get lost in the SEO sauce when we're writing, of trying to check off all those boxes, and forgetting we're writing for humans.

We have to find a balance between that analytical side of writing and that creative side of writing, to hit both boxes.”

You say that brands chasing shortcuts are clinging to yesterday's ranking tactics, so what are yesterday's ranking tactics that don't work anymore?

“We have to stop writing content solely because keywords dictate that's where we should start writing content.

We've spent so many years fighting Google, and watching Panda, Penguin, EEAT, and the Helpful Content Update change how we're writing content. To me, none of those compares to what's happening here with this switch, both with the funnel and with AI.

To me, you have to figure out what's the most important content that actually converts. Starting with that intent through conversion is what's going to make it through all these shifts in AI – not just with Google, but with other platforms.

Right now, we spend so much time starting content creation with keywords. Yes, page one rankings for some of those big keywords will drive brand awareness and conversion. Those are great, and you can still focus on that. However, in a more AI-dominated world, you have to start thinking about what your potential customers and clients are asking.

You need to focus on that, rather than just looking at wherever there is keyword volume. That's not a priority.”

Melissa, what's the key takeaway from the tip you shared today?

“Winners in this new shift to AI-first are going to be brands who obsess over intent and really try to answer the questions that their potential customers and clients are asking.

Focussing on every page, every paragraph, and every example to match that search intent is going to become more and more important as people turn to AI – both on Google and other platforms – to find the information that guides them to you.”

Melissa Popp is VP of Content Strategy & Innovation at RicketyRoo. Find out more over at RicketyRoo.com.