Speaker 1: 0:52

Hi Ed Dawson here, and, as I'm a bit busy at the moment and need a break, welcome to another one of my best of SEO is not that hard podcasts. These are the episodes from the back catalog that I think have the greatest hits and ones that are still relevant and provide great value for you. So, without further ado, let's get into the episode. Hello and welcome to. Seo is not that hard. I'm your host, ed Dawson, the founder of KeywordsPeopleUsecom, the place to find and organize the questions people ask online. I'm an SEO developer, affiliate marketer and entrepreneur. I've been building and monetizing websites for over 20 years and I've bought and sold a few along the way. I'm here to share with you the SEO knowledge, hints and tips I've built up over the years. Hello and welcome to another episode of SEO is not that hard. It's me, ed Dawson, as usual, hosting, and today I'm going to talk about intent shift and question shift and whether the two are similar, different or yeah, completely polar opposites. This has come up to me because I've been watching some people on Twitter in the SEO world um yeah, arguing pretty much over what is the definition of intent shift. So, if we look at, take a step back and what is intent? I mean intent is what is the purpose of someone's search? So what are they trying to do? What are they trying to achieve? What are they trying to find? What's the intent of their search? So the concept of intent shift is when the meaning of that search or the intent of that search, the purpose of that search, changes. Now this has been talked about for a long time and traditionally in SEO people would say the intent shift is based around when the purpose of someone searching for a particular keyword changes over time. So an example that's often given I think John Mueller from Google gave this exact example was that if someone's searching for Christmas trees at Christmastime or in the run-up to Christmas, they're generally looking to purchase a Christmas tree. They're looking for somewhere to buy a tree. It's a transactional query. Christmas tree they're looking for somewhere to buy a tree. It's a transactional query. So Google will tend to serve more results that are based around buying a Christmas tree Post Christmas, just shortly after Christmas, people searching for Christmas trees are probably looking for things about how to dispose of a Christmas tree.

Speaker 1: 3:10

So there's a shift in the intent of the search Christmas trees. And if someone's searching for Christmas trees in spring or in the summer. They're probably just doing research on what type of trees make Christmas trees. There might be someone looking to wholesale Christmas trees and looking to find a place to buy them so that they can sell them in the future. So it might be someone who's more commercial searches for people bulk buying, people retailing them.

Speaker 1: 3:40

So that's how an example of how intent can shift over time for the same keyword. So people aren't searching with different keywords, they're just still searching the same keyword. But the intent of what they're searching for changes and therefore what Google may serve will change as that intent shifts. And this could happen for a whole number of things. And Google probably manages that by looking at the kind of results people start to click through. Because if Google, for example, is showing a whole load of transactional pages for Christmas trees people selling Christmas trees but more people are actually clicking, say, a Wikipedia result about search pages and it's clearly informational and they're seeing the shift of the intent of people. The results that people are clicking on are more informational than transactional. Then they'll start to shift the results that they show for those keywords and as it approaches more like a Christmas time, people start clicking more results where they're actually selling. People are selling those transactional websites where people can buy a Christmas tree then they'll probably start to promote more transactional sites and you can see that is something they can automate across all keywords by watching the type of sites, the type of pages that people start to click on in those search results. So that is what most people in seo traditionally call intent shift. Now there's been some discussion recently where some people are proposing that intent shift is when people actually start searching for different keywords. So over time the keywords that people search for around a topic start to change.

Speaker 1: 5:32

Now we saw this with broadbandcouk because back in the early days kind of like 2004 to 2008 time, maybe a little bit later most of the people coming to the site were looking at getting broadband for the first time. They wanted to know what broadband was. They wanted to understand how it works. They wanted to understand how to get it. For the first time they were shifting from dial-up internet access for those of us that can remember that to broadband internet access, and they were. It's all about education and choosing your first supplier. Now, obviously, as more and more people got broadband, less people started asking that question and questions around getting broadband for the first time and it and the intent of people searching for broadband shifted to quite often looking for a better deal or how to switch supplier. So they were still searching for broadband, but instead of being first-time customers, they were now churning customers and looking to switch and everything was around how to switch. Now this really sort of presented itself in the way that their questions changed. So over time we saw that the type of questions that people were asking about broadband were starting to change and were starting to evolve as they went from learning about from new, from scratch, into how to switch. So that's where the questions changed. So is this an intent shift? Because people searching for, say, a broad keyword like broadband, they were still looking for broadband. Intent hadn't changed particularly, but the questions they were asking us, the questions they were trying to discover and find out, were changing.

Speaker 1: 7:07

Now, keywords people use. Obviously we specialize in finding the questions people are asking, particularly around. People also ask from google and mining. People also ask and finding the intent chains of the questions and the follow-up questions people ask as they're searching for a particular topic from a seed, and we see that these do change over time. These questions do change over time. They can change quite quickly, um, but sometimes they might change more slowly. We've actually got functionality in keywords people use called search alerts. That allows you to automate checking for a seed keyword. What the people also asks are on a set period, so you can do it daily, weekly, monthly, however period you want. So every set period will do an automatic check for you, record the results and then let you compare results from different time periods so you can say, if you start a search, let's up, say, in january, all the way through to december in a year, you can then, um at any point go through and compare results from. You know from january to october what's changed between two dates. So we can see that, that how those questions change over time. There's question shift um, people might still be searching for the same. You know, the same broad seed keyword hasn't changed, so the overall intent might not have shifted.

Speaker 1: 8:26

The questions that people ask within that intent can change and we, you know we can pick that up and we can see it. And it's a key thing. If you're creating content on something, you want to stay up to date, you need to know as those new questions come out and those questions shift. So who's right in the argument? Is intent shift that people change the keywords or is it that the keywords don't change but the kind of content people are after does change? Well, I mean, I think, to be honest, both sides are right. There are some keywords, clearly, where the intent shifts but the keywords don't over time. But there are others where the topic doesn't change but the questions people ask within the topic shift. So that's a question shift. So it's not really a case of what is intent shift and there's two ways of describing it and there's two different camps. Really, they're both right, both sides are right and they just probably need to stop arguing over the terminology.

Speaker 1: 9:29

I would just leave intent shift as what people have called intent shift for a long time. That's where the keyword stays the same but the questions people are. You know, sorry, not the questions, but the information people are trying to find changes. So, like the christmas tree example, whereas question shift is, as you know, for a keyword doesn't change, but the questions people are asking change and develop over time, especially for any kind of market or any kind of product or any kind of topic where there's a discovery phase and it's a new topic for everybody and then over time that mark matures and the kind of questions people ask change. So yeah, both are right. But just clarify talking about it when you look at it.

Speaker 1: 10:17

And, as I say, do watch, do set a search alert, do check so you can see how questions are changing over time in the topic areas that you're interested in, because you will find that you can't just find the questions on on one day, work all your content around that and then that's it. You're done forever. Because quite often in you know the vast majority of topic areas, you'll find that there's new questions coming up all the time and you need to be on top of them. So a search alert can be a fantastic way of sorting that. So I hope you found that interesting and I will see you in the next episode.

Speaker 1: 10:53

Before I go, I just wanted to let you know that if you'd like a personal demo of our tools that Keywords People use that you can book a free, no obligation, one-on-one video call with me where I show you how we can help you level up your content by finding and answering the questions your audience actually have. You can also ask me any SEO questions you have. You just need to go to keywordspeopleusecom slash demo where you can pick a time and date that suits you for us to catch up Once again. That's keywordspeopleusecom slash demo and you can also find that link in the show notes of today's episode. Hope to chat with you soon.

Speaker 1: 11:26

Thanks for being a listener. I really appreciate it. Please subscribe and share. It really helps. Seo is not that hard. It's brought to you by keywordspeopleusecom, the place to find and organize the questions people ask online. See why thousands of people use us every day. Try it today for free at keywordspeopleusecom To get an instant hit of more SEO tips. Then find the link to download a free copy of my 101 quick SEO tips in the show notes of today's episode. If you want to get in touch, have any questions, I'd love to hear from you. I'm at channel5 on Twitter. You can email me at podcast at keywordspeopleusecom. Bye now and see you in the next episode of seo is not that hard.