In this post I will explain the strategy and content writing techniques I use to write articles that rank in the top 3 positions for buying intent keywords (keywords that lead to a purchase).
I will cite examples from content I wrote for Fireflies AI(an AI-powered note-taking software) targeting buying intent which are currently ranking in the top 3 for at least 20 high buying intent keywords:
And 40 more ranking somewhere on page one.
If you’re looking to work with a content strategist and writer that will help your rank for competitive keywords and effectively sell your product to site visitors, let’s chat.
Here’s a quick recap of what I’ll cover:
1. My content marketing principle
2. My research process
3. Pain point content audit
4. Customer and product research
5. Keyword filtering/research
6. SERP analysis; finding gap in ranking
7. My writing process (Pain Point copywriting)
8. How I Modify Titles To Attract Target Clicks.
9. How I use pain points and product story to initiate trust signals
10. How I use semantic relations and on-page optimisation to boost rank signals
11. How I use copywriting techniques to engage the reader
12. Result & Analytics
13. Next steps
14. Recommendations
My content marketing principle
Follow The Pain point!
That is my content marketing philosophy. It means I specialise in responding to queries where the searcher is looking to solve a problem that’s causing them pain at work, at home, among friends, etc.
I do this because answering those queries is the most effective way to generate leads– trials, demos, and form submissions– for your business and build a brand with loyal customers.
There are two categories of pain point queries-
- Middle-of-the-funnel pain points involve queries such as “Is there an app that takes note for you?” and “Food to grow muscle”. Here, the searcher is problem-aware (something needs to change) but isn’t sure there is a product to solve such a problem. Similarly, MOFU pain points come from the searcher looking for the best way to complete a process. Such queries are called Jobs-To-Be-Done and often look like this; “How to download Podcast transcript”.
- Bottom-of-the-funnel pain points: Here, the searcher is problem-aware (I can’t keep taking notes by hand), solution-aware (I need software to take notes for me), but is product-unaware (what’s the best software to take notes?). So, they search for terms like “Note-taking software”, “CRM software”, “Vitamin D supplements”, etc.
The ultimate advantage of running a content strategy prioritising BOFU and MOFU audience is that you’ll start tracking conversion from the onset instead of traffic volume.
Instead of producing hundreds of articles and eBooks educating the reader on subjects they can learn on Wikipedia, you’ll write content that connects your product directly to customer problems.
I follow a distinct research and writing process to achieve effective content writing for brands like yours.
My research process
- Pain point content audit
A pain point content audit aims to find lead-generation opportunities for your business from search.
A typical content audit examines the performance of your content asset and identifies gaps in the content offering. A pain point content audit examines the performance of conversion-focused content assets.
Instead of looking for areas where you can outrank your competitors, pain point content audit prioritises the following:
- Finding search terms expressing pain points your product/service solves that you haven’t covered.
- And opportunities to deeply engage site visitors with product copywriting techniques.
How I do a pain point content audit for your business in 5 steps
- Set a product-related lead generation goal: Your pain point content audit aims to generate leads– free trials, demos, contact forms, etc.– from MOFU and BOFU content.
- Take an inventory of your conversion-focused content assets. Your conversion-focused assets are your MOFU and BOTU blog posts, feature pages, solution pages, industries-served pages, pricing pages, etc.
- Collect and analyse data: Analyse each page using Semrush or Ahref domain analysis. Examine where the page ranks, the keywords it ranks for, and how much traffic it generates for your site. If you’ve set up conversion tracking in your Google Analytics, analyse how visitors interact on each page; are they spending time or just bouncing off? Which pages are they visiting after leaving one of your conversion-focused pages?
- Create an action plan: By understanding the pain point keywords your site is showing up for and how users interact with your conversion-focused content, you can quickly determine where you need improvement. For example:
- If your home page ranks for a BOFU keyword when the SERP is dominated by blog posts, consider writing a blog post targeting that keyword.
- If a blog post ranks outside the top 10 for a pain point keyword, consider updating the page with more SERP features (images, user reviews, etc.) and supporting the page with interlinks from semantically related pages.
- If many searchers arrive on your BOFU or MOFU pages but aren’t converting, consider optimising your pain point copywriting approach (I discuss this further below).
The steps above show the basics of running a pain point content audit and how to troubleshoot issues yourself. They are not representative of what a full-scale audit entails. If you’d like to run a full content audit for your site to discover hidden ranking opportunities, let’s talk.
I am now going to show you my customer and product research process. For practical effect, I will use two scenarios I resolved for a SaaS brand.
Scenario 1: After a pain point content audit, I found that the homepage ranked for a buying intent keyword; “ai note-taking app”. While it’s great that your page ranks for a keyword, the purpose of the homepage is not to sell and convert a reader. Instead, the homepage should direct them to specific places where you can either educate or convert them into customers. So, in this scenario, the solution for the brand was to cover the keyword in-depth in a BOFU blog post.
Scenario 2: The SaaS product was not ranking in the top 10 for MOFU keywords such as “how to download podcast transcript”,; which is one of the operations the SaaS product does effectively. The solution for this scenario is to write product-led articles showing “how to download podcast transcripts with Fireflies”.
So, I began with customer and product research.
2. Customer and product research
Most writers begin pain point content strategy with keyword research. They log in to their favourite SEO tool, find keywords with significant search volume, and start cranking out articles.
It is often better to begin with customer research because BOFU or MOFU content aims to attract targeted customers.
Specifically, you want to attract the fraction of searchers most similar to your customers, sharing identical pain points and needing the same solution.
Aside from the fact that it’s easier to sell your product to them, you are also most likely to record a low free-trial churn rate because you’ve mapped customer psychology to prospect needs.
When I wrote for Fireflies, I had used the software for over two months and understood how it solves meeting transcription problems.
Nonetheless, I still followed the typical customer and product research process since I was only one of their target audience.
Here is how I research products and customers in three steps:
- Discover the core customer pain points and product features through a demo.
- Match customer pain points to your product’s value proposition.
Discover the cover customer pain points through product demo/interview
I aim to discover three things in product demos:
- Who are your best customers, where do they come from, and what technology are they using? This question helps us draw out the profile of a typical customer. It covers their specific job functions and industries. It also helps me understand if your customer is the user or buyer of the product (do they have to speak to someone in finance before purchasing), etc. Most importantly, this section helps me understand where the customer is coming from. Most of Fireflies’ customers are in sales. They often switch from manual meeting management systems to software. Typically, the customer comes to Fireflies from a much bigger software like Gong.
- What are the specific scenarios that bring them to your product? What problem are they trying to solve in those scenarios? For example, a customer looking for a PTO tracking system might need software sufficient for a small team so they don’t have to pay for an HR platform. That way, a product like Timetastic might serve them better than BambooHR. So, within that scenario, they want to solve problems such as the pain of manually updating spreadsheets to track PTO without breaking the bank or going through the learning curve of a complex HR platform.
- How does your product solve these scenarios, and what differentiates your product from competitors? This is where the product walkthrough comes in. I highlighted product features that solve each problem, how it solves it, the benefits of solving it that way, and what the before and after picture looks like for a customer.
A product and customer research can yield a transcript of over 6,000 words of raw data. But most searchers want to solve 2-3 serious pain points.
So, we want to synthesise the data so as not to overwhelm the reader with information (and come across as overly salesy).
Synthesising the data helps us (1) prioritise features, (2) highlight the core product value propositions, and (3) develop a strong angle for product copywriting.
How I Synthesise Product Research Data for Efficient In-depth Product Copywriting
Synthesising product research data involves structuring the information into four silos (1) Product features, (2) Value proposition, (3) Benefits, and (4) Consequences.
I’ll now show you how I build this structure in a spreadsheet.
- Product feature: Smart search
- Value proposition: save time by finding sales data mentioned in a sales call, such as data & time, in one click.
- Benefit: That way, you compose detailed follow-up emails faster and turn in in-depth sales reports without burning time.
- Consequences: Now, you can close more deals faster.
Now that we understand the specific problems the searcher wants to solve, how your product solves similar problems for your customers, and the product features and value propositions relevant to this problem, finding keywords that best fit the searcher’s intent is the next step.
3. Keyword research & filtering
Typically, we’ll find thousands of keywords relevant to your brand during this process.
The goal is to prioritise the keywords representing your products’ deepest expertise. What’s the solution your product can solve better than anyone? Therefore, the purpose of this step is to achieve the following:
- Separate commercial and informational traffic: We only want to focus on commercial queries because they drive buying intent.
- Filter out commercial traffic that doesn’t align with our customer pain points or product value proposition: Your website can rank for commercial keywords and pain points outside your product’s core value proposition due to semantic relations.
- Find MOFU pain points your product can effectively solve. That way, we can propose your product as the solution to complete tasks efficiently, thus initiating a signup.
Before I discuss the next step (keyword research and filtering), take note of the caveat below:
Note: Some commercial keywords do not have direct buying intent or pain points. Such commercial queries are marked informational and commercial. For example, “CRM software” is informative and commercial because the searcher might want to know what CRM software is. A key phrase like “software to manage customer data” is purely commercial with a pain point (I am sinking in manual customer data management) and demand (I need software to automate removing the pain of manually managing custom data). While writing BOFU content for such keywords is okay, your priority should be first covering those keywords with clear pain points.
Keyword filtering process for a recruitment automation SaaS brand
The examples below show the keyword filtering process for a recruitment automation SaaS. The first screenshot shows a bunch of keywords driving impressions to the website. The figure next to the keywords is the website’s ranking position.
You’ll notice the keywords are marked as commercial intent. However, writing content for each keyword will be a strategic error. Those who do it follow two flawed mindsets
- Impression: They imagine this: “The keywords are already driving impressions to our site, so we should double down on them”. Impression is just that– impression. And even if it drives traffic to your site, do you plan to convert the traffic to customers? Will you start offering them newsletter drips about topics that aren’t even in your core themes?
- Competitors: They imagine “our competitors write about these topics we should write about too”. First, your competitor might not be your competitor. People you share traffic with are your SERP competitor– not a business competitor. Your real competitors are those whose core product features align with yours. And even at that, following your true competitor assumes that they’ve done due diligence and have a clue what they are doing.
This is why keyword filtering is good. The process centres around your long-term goals: what do you want to be known for? In this case, “recruitment automation” is the primary keyword.
So, I filtered their keywords to show the best keywords they should be ranking for. As you can see in the screenshot below, the said website ranks 18th for its primary keyword.
The filtering result showed that the website receives impressions for its primary keyword but isn’t ranking in the top 10. There are three primary reasons for this:
- The landing page/home page is the only page targeting that keyword
- The page targeting the keyword is not effectively optimised for the keyword. It might be missing vital SERP features like images, downloadable assets, etc.
- The page targeting the keyword is an orphan page. The page is not connected to a cluster of articles covering the topic.
Factors to consider if you have a low domain authority
- Low KD; high intent
If you have low domain authority, targeting pain point keywords with low keyword difficulty and high buying intent is best.
Fireflies is a conversational intelligence software, a category it shares with Gong and Avoma (the big guys). Instead of trying to outrank Gong for “best conversational intelligence app”, I decided on the “best AI note-taking app”, “AI note-taking app,” and “app that takes notes for you”. They had a low volume, low keyword difficulty and high buying intent.
- Growing trends:
AI was a rising trend when we published the first post, so it made sense to tap into the growth. Trends are not an essential factor to consider when designing your BOFU content strategy, but when you catch the trend, it helps.
- Point of view: Bringing a fresh point of view (POV) to the SERP can boost your chances of ranking for your money keywords. You can do this with title modifiers.
We now have a list of the best keywords to target for your brand and can start writing articles. But we need to analyse each article’s SERP before writing them.
4. SERP analysis; finding gap in ranking
Most people do SERP analysis to answer the wrong question. They ask: “How can I make my content better than the existing top 10 results?
This is wrong because they often define “better content” from their perspective instead of considering the reader.
For example, marketers consider 10x content better content. They think: everyone’s writing 2000 words max; let’s write 5,000 words, with more images, videos and info charts. All of these are good, but does your reader need 10x content?
In my experience, SERP analysis should answer this question instead: What would help my target reader that other existing top 10 results are not doing?”. That’s a different approach.
That way, you are probing your reader’s mind to fill a gap in the SERP. Instead of leading your SERP analysis with a competitive mindset (let’s de-rank this competitor brand with longer content), you’re thinking about how to help the reader in a way that hasn’t been done yet.
And there are simple ways to do that, especially for BOFU and MOFU pain point content.
- Categorise product roundups (structure): If everyone is writing “Best Newsletter Platform in 2023,” you can help your reader better by writing “Best Newsletter Platforms for Creators.” That way, you’re filling a gap in SERP.
- Review products from a unique POV (opinion): Instead of writing “Best PTO Tracking Software,” you can write “Which PTO Tracking Software is the Best Spreadsheet Alternative?”
- Add free templates/tools to help the reader (resource): Example: 6 AI Note Taking Apps for Meetings (free meeting agenda templates)
When you’ve identified a gap in ranking and know which of the styles above will help you better serve the reader, we can go into that writing process.
My writing process (Pain Point copywriting)
We’ve understood our target reader profile, analysed product value props and selected a keyword with the right mix of pain points and demand. Now, I’ll explain the following
- how I modify titles to attract targeted clicks
- use pain points and product stories to initiate trust signals
- use semantic relations and on-page optimisation to boost rank signals and
- Use copywriting techniques to engage the reader and drive conversion
How I Modify Titles To Attract Target Clicks.
I modify titles to reflect a point of view that fits the following conditions: (1) the point of view or angle that would benefit my target reader and (2) other top 10 articles did not cover the said angle or point of view.
This approach aims to answer the following questions: what can I say in 60 characters that would attract people who are most likely to become my customers?
When your prospect scans the SERP, you want them to see your headline and go, “yeah, this one’s for me”. So it’s not enough to rewrite the same “Best X for Y” as everyone. You want to modify your title with something that makes it more relevant and more timely.
In the following example, the primary keyword was “PTO tracking software”. However, the title was modified by two factors derived from customer and product research.
The first condition was that the article addresses the pain of using a spreadsheet to track PTO, so customers primarily shift to PTO tracking software. The second condition was that customers who primarily shift from tracking templates to software are usually small teams.
Larger teams would have their entire employee absence management system in an HR platform like Bamboo. Therefore, it’s great to quickly attract this category in the title based on their demographic data and their pain points.
Another example is from one of the articles currently ranking in the top 3 for buying intent keywords. While the primary keyword was “Ai note taking”, the title was modified by targeting a demographic (busy sales reps) to attract targeted clicks.
How I use pain points and product story to initiate trust signals
If a searcher lands on your website right now, will you pass the sniff test? The sniff test is how readers (whether B2B or B2C) evaluate your qualifications to talk to them about a subject.
In BOFU writing, the only way to pass this sniff test is to show you deeply understand the reader’s pain points. Deeply = make them feel like you’re holding a mirror up for them to see their problems. There is no other way.
Here are examples from the ranking articles that show how I sufficiently discuss pain points.
Article 1: Best AI Note-taking Apps For Busy Sales Reps
I described the pain of taking notes with a digital note-taker. But it didn’t stop there. I made a case for “the best” AI note-taking apps for sales reps. That is, it’s not enough for an AI note-taking app to transcribe:
- It must be transcribed at the highest accuracy possible; otherwise, the sales rep has to spend time editing again or risk working with inaccurate information.
- It must have auto-recording features so the sales rep doesn’t have to manually set up transcription on each call– they make around eight calls daily. Without this feature, they risk losing all call data if they forget to set up the transcription manually.
Here’s the product story:
“In our talks to sales reps” instantly signals that we’ve done real research with real humans here. People like you, the reader and sales rep, come to us to solve this problem. That’s why we built our product this way.
Like pain points, the product story helps us pass the trust signal (human reader) by describing our expertise. Essentially answering this question: What qualifies you to talk to me about this issue?
Article 2: How To Download Podcast Transcript (Fast and Free Method)
For this article, I used bullet points to list the possible scenarios you’d encounter when you try to get podcast transcripts today. Interestingly, we made a case for our article/product by disapproving all other alternative methods or software.
Downloading podcast transcripts should be free, but the free options generate transcripts that are hard to follow or require heavy editing. The paid tools are effective but often too expensive. So, this article shows how to solve this problem with Fireflies.
How I use semantic relations and on-page optimisation to boost rank signals
If you pass the human sniff test with trust signals, you also want to pass the search engine sniff test through rank signals. Search engines don’t rank pages (per se); they rank ‘rank signals’.
Rank signals are ranking factors search engines use to sort the search results according to their quality and relevance to the particular query.
Content relevance is one of the most important ranking factors. The search engine tries to understand your web page’s content and determine whether it might be relevant for some particular search query.
This is why showing the semantic relationship between words and keyphrases is important. It proves to the search engine that the article belongs to other relevant concepts.
For example, AI note-taking correlates to sales reps, conversational intelligence, sales calls, prospects, etc.
On-page optimisation
- Interlinking: Link this article to related content to improve page relevance. Note that we linked to this article using an exact match (because it includes a keyword that mirrors the page being linked to). The example below shows how I linked to the AI note-taking article from the podcast transcription article using “AI note taking apps” as the anchor text.
- PAA & Featured snippet optimisation: I also answered People Also Asked queries within the paragraphs and at the end of the page to improve rank signals. This helped us capture featured snippets for both articles.
How I use copywriting techniques to engage the reader
This is where our product research data helps our product copywriting technique. Your reader wants to know exactly how your product helps them. In the example below,
Product feature = smart search
Process value proposition = System-generated AI filters help you identify the date & time, questions, etc., mentioned during the call.
Benefit = Quickly find critical information
Primary value proposition = Now you can review meetings in minutes (not hours anymore)
Essentially, you’re saying: This is bad. For this reason. Leading to this consequence. This product can solve it because of this unique process. Now you can do this. Try it out.
Result & Analytics
I’m proud of how the two articles published have performed. Both articles rank in the top 3 for the keywords I optimised them for and several other related keywords.
After six months, we have at least 23 top 3 ranking keywords with high buying intent and 40 more ranking somewhere on page one.
Article 1
Article 2
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Discussion of themes and findings in keyword distribution
- Keywords with low search volume and low difficulty generate 10X their volume over time and become more difficult to rank. When I wrote the first article in January, “ai note-taking app” had 20 search volumes, according to Semrush, but it has consistently driven up to 100 monthly site visits. I often advise clients to find these keywords and rank for them fast to own that space in the SERP and optimise over time to stay there.
- BOFU content often helps discover more demand-focused keywords. Keywords like “AI that takes notes for you” and “apps that listen and take notes” express a clearer demand than “AI note taker”– even though they both share commercial intent. To bolster ranking, you can cover these keywords within the ranking article.
- Semantic relations help capture more navigation/commercial keywords. Semantic relations are one of the ranking signals Google loves. Because we’re talking about note-taking for sales reps and used semantically related concepts like “call notes software”, “conversational intelligence”, “prospects”, and “sales calls” in our intro, the articles are now ranking for more specific keywords like “best apps for sales”; which can be covered in a separate blog post, “collaborative note taker”; that is a note taker that enables teams to share transcripts for sales coaching, download Spotify transcripts.
- Answering People Also Asked queries within the article’s body helps win a dozen featured snippets. With SGE coming up soon, this skill will become essential in the SEO community.
Next steps.
Successfully ranking a site in the top 3 spots for buying keywords is only half the job. The real work begins after that. You don’t want to rank and tank– you want to keep the site up there to guarantee consistent lead generation. That’s where the following steps come in:
- Content update
After six months of consistently ranking in the top 3 for buying keywords, you should consider a content update. The update includes:
- Updating the article with interlinks to top-performing blog posts.
- Update the article with more SERP features
- Answer more ‘people also asked’ queries within the blog post.
- Cluster support (JTBD & BOFU keywords)
An article in the top 3 will also rank on the first and second page for similar keywords. Those are keywords that the blog post cannot sufficiently cover. For example, the Fireflies article also ranks for the following keywords:
- Fireflies ai vs Otter ai
- Sembly vs. otter (vs. Fireflies)
- Automatic notes generator
- Call notes software
- App that listens and takes notes
In that case, you should create a cluster of content that connects to a pillar article (AI note-taking apps, in this case) and interlink those articles to the pillar to support ranking.
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