Part 3: What are the Micro-Moments?

In part 3 we will investigate the meaning of the keywords and try to find out the reasons behind the successful searched keywords.

You can either watch the video from Websima DMCC or read this article for the Third part of this season. (We suggest you watching the video)

Here is where you understand why some of your keywords are not working well and what should you do to make them work for you.

To understand the intent of the users, we should understand the “Micro-Moments” . Micro-Moments are the new subject in SEO to compete in. You remember in part 1 we explained that you should invest on implications instead of contents. Here in this part, you will totally understand that why we need to do that.

From the moment a user searches for something, till the moment he becomes your customer, there are a lot of Micro-moments. Usually users don’t become your customer in their first search. So, we should invest in these micro-moments to enhance our chance to get them.

What are the Micro-Moments?

We categorise them into 4 concepts:

• To-Know: It is related to the searches in which users are looking for information about something.
• To-Go: It is related to the searches in which users are looking for a place or location to go.
• To- Do: It is related to the searches in which users need data to do something.
• To- Buy: It is related to the searches in which users are searching to buy something

We need to find out the Micro-moment’s categories for our keywords. For example, if someone is searching for “BMW X5 technical specification”. He is more likely to be in the first category which is “To know”. But if someone is searching for “BMW X5 service and repair centre in Dubai”, he is looking for a location. So, this keyword would be categorised into second concept which is “To go”. Also, if someone search for “How to fix BMW X5 mirrors”, he wants to do something so it will be in the “To-do” category. And if someone searches for “buying a BMW X5 in Dubai”, he really wants to buy the car and will be categorised in “To buy” concept.

Keep in mind that not all of the searches are that clear. There are some keywords that you cannot categorise them clearly. We call this “Opacity”. The more the intent of the user is clear, the opacity would be higher. We also categorise the opacity into 3 sections:

Specific, Mixed and Unknown.

If you are a little bit confused, don’t be worried, you will get it in my examples.

We have a keyword: “Lease a car”

Let’s check what are the micro-moments and opacity of it? Think about it. What is the opacity of it? in which category you put it?

From my point of view, its opacity is quite low, because I really don’t know what exactly a user wants from this search. In my opinion it can be “To know” or “To buy”. He may search to know how to lease a car but still there is a probability that he actually wants to lease a car.

Why the opacity is low? Because I don’t know what kind of car he wants? What is his budget? When does he want it? So, the opacity is in very low.

Let’s try another keyword. “Lease a car from BMW”. Think about its Micro-moments:

In this keyword, the opacity is a little bit more because at least we know that user is searching for which brand. Also, in this keyword, the probability that the user is willing to buy is more than “to know”.

Now if we check the “Lease BMW X5 today” that would make the opacity so high.

Because here we know what exactly the user is looking for, we even know his budget. We also know that he wants it quickly. It also increases the “To buy” category chance significantly.

Generally, when we have a longer phrase of keywords, the opacity would be higher and Micro-moments categorisation would be easier.

Let’s try another example. If someone searches for “Comparing BMW X5 and Volvo XC60”, what do you think about its micro-moments?

It is clearly in “to-know” category. Its opacity is also high. There is still a little chance that the user is in “to-buy” category but it is very low.

Now check this keyword: “BMW Services and repair location”

Here “To-go” category clearly has a high chance. “To-do” and “to-know” are very low. But what about the “to-buy” category?

I assume that it is high, but why? Because if I have garage for BMW services and repairs, this search brings me customers! So, I need to work on it. whether to work in my website or on the local SEO. So, if you are a lease company in Dubai, you should assume the “To-buy” category very low. But if you have a garage, it can be a good source for your “to-buy” category.

As you have seen, Micro-moments are also depending on your business, you should consider everything to evaluate them.

How can we categorise complicated keywords?

Till now, we have figured out that you need to understand the micro-moments for all of the keywords you’ve found for your project.  But sometimes, it is not easy to do that, there are some mixed concepts that are not easy to be categorised. The question is How can we categorise them?

The best method to do that is to check it on Google. Google is optimising itself by user-experience, so we can trust Google’s results.

In our previous examples, we evaluated “Comparing BMW X5 and Volvo XC60”, Our estimation was that its micro-moments should be more “to-know” rather than others. Let’s also check our estimation on Google. If we search this on Google, you can see the results as below:

As you can see, all of the results are in “to-know” category. You can check the websites one by one to find out that. In those websites, there is no product to buy or location to go or things to do. So, our estimation was accurate.

There is an important point I want to mention here. As the search phrase becomes longer, its probability to be in “to-buy” category would increase.

Let’s try an example step by step. Firs search for “Cars”:

The first thing you see are images. The second suggestion is Wikipedia, and both are “to-know” category.

Now if we change “cars” to “buy cars” this is going to be the results:

As you can see, the first suggestion are the locations, so it is “to-go” micro-moments. But the next 5 suggestions are all in the “to-buy” category. If we change the phrase to “buy sport cars online” then you will have the first 20 suggestions all in the “to-buy category.

It means that the more specific and longer the searches are,  it is more possible that the user is willing to buy something.

So, we talked about the micro-moments, but how we can plan our strategies based on that?

Strategies

1. Be different!

When intent of the all pages in a search are the same, BUT the intent of the users are possible to be different, invest on that different category!

For example, if you search for “buy backlink”, the results are always “to-buy”. But still there are some users which want to know about the backlinks. So, it is also a little bit “to-know” but there is no result for that. In this case you can work on the “to-know” concept of this keyword and attract visitors.

2. Be an opportunist

When there are different micro-moments for a specific keyword, invest on the category that you have weaker competitors!

To do that, you need to categorise the competitors by their micro-moments concept. Then try to find the weaker ones and work on it.

3. Mix it up!

When a keyword has more than one category, try to work on all of them! For example, if a keyword is “to-buy” and also “to-know” but each of your competitors has only worked on one of them only, you can come up with a new idea and cover the both categories in your website.

4. Be loyal

When you think a keyword is absolutely in only one category, and Google also confirm it, be loyal to that. In this case even if you invest on other categories of the micro-moments you will not get any result. The only way to compete in this case is to produce powerful contents which we will talk about it in next seasons.

We are at the end of the part 3, till now we found our keywords and categorised them. We also found their micro-moments.

In part 4 we try to teach you how to build your content puzzle.

You can comment your experience & questions here and we will try to answer that as soon as possible.