All search intent is not created equal. That may sound passé to say, as we know that certain keywords obviously hold a lot more value than others, but it’s not as simple as the transactional vs. informational vs. navigational framework that most SEOs swear by. An understated yet overpowered factor of any search is the urgency behind it, as in – how urgent is it that the searcher finds the answer or solution to their problem in a timely manner? In this blog, we will explore the importance of considering urgency when creating SEO content, and look into ways you can utilize urgency to drive up click-through rates and conversion rates astronomically.
The Psychology of Urgency
Urgency is what drives action in the world – it’s what makes things get done. If not for urgency, we would all just put things off until later, and lackadaisically get tasks done when we wanted to, and not when they needed to. Urgency is also driven by fear – we get things done quickly because we fear the consequences of not getting them done. As most marketers know, fear is the ultimate motivator, so understanding how to use urgency in your SEO can be an extremely powerful tool.
Understanding Different Levels of Urgency
Let’s look at some examples of how search urgency could vary in certain situations.
Obviously, there are certain situations where finding a solution to a problem is more urgent than others.
For example, say you run an E-commerce website. Maybe you notice one day that a page is loading slowly, but it is still loading. You may search “why is my site running slow” or “how to speed up my site.” There is some moderate urgency there, as you want to figure it out in the near future, but overall, it is not a critical “I have to figure this out now” level of urgency. It will drive action at some point, but it isn’t a panic mode meltdown moment. Let’s think of this as low urgency.
Now, let’s step up the level of urgency. Maybe you, the E-commerce site owner, are noticing that some of your product images aren’t loading properly. This can affect your conversion rate and your sales, so it’s pretty important to figure out soon. You may search “images on site aren’t loading” and find that there could be a few different possibilities of why they aren’t loading, and you may have to take some time trying some different solutions. Ultimately, you need to get it done, and it will drive you to take some action, but it may not lead you to call someone or to reach out to support right then and there, making it medium urgency.
Then, there’s the ultimate meltdown mode level of urgency – high urgency. Your E-commerce site is completely down, you’re getting an error message, and you don’t know what it means. This means you’re losing potential sales – every hour, every minute, and every second. You have to get this figured out NOW. Your blood is pumping, you’re worrying about the lost sales, the inventory sitting in your warehouse that’s not moving – you are panicking. You try to contact your website host, but it’s after support hours and they won’t answer until tomorrow. Finally, in a last-ditch effort, you Google “how do I fix (blank) error code?” and the first thing that pops up is an article about how to fix it.
You start to read the article, and it gives a summation of what could fix the problem, but right near the top, you notice a “Call us for 24/7 support” call to action and a phone number. You’re not going to waste a second more reading on your own – you are going to call that number, and you’re going to desperately hope that someone picks up. Now that – that is a high urgency intent search, and if you’re the IT company or computer pro who wrote that article, you’re probably getting calls all day and night long.
You can see with these three examples how the level of urgency can drive action without much research or even consideration. If you’re in a desperate situation like the one described above, you might not even care if the company that says they can fix it has bad reviews; in fact, you’re probably not even going to look. If someone says they can fix it NOW, you’re going to call them. If you can be that company that provides that comfort in a situation of deep desperation, you will be getting business without even trying.
How to Optimize for High Urgency Searches
Now, the examples above are clearly pretty specific to IT and website issues. There are a lot of high urgency searches related to that field, and many of those searches are as urgent as it gets. The thing is, there are high urgency searches that can be identified in any industry – you just have to know your customer and understand what crises they may face.
As a disclaimer here, I’m not advocating for taking advantage of people’s desperation. I’m going to assume the reader of this article is selling a product or providing a service in good faith and that by targeting these high urgency searches you are legitimately interested in helping the searcher, along with getting their business. The point of this blog is to show you how these searches can drive action, and how you can identify and optimize for them so you can help that desperate searcher.
Now, back to how we identify high urgency searches in any industry. Let’s put it in list form as that’s how I know everyone likes their crunchy how-to information.
- Know your customer’s fears. Every customer for every product is buying because of some kind of fear. Even someone buying a video game is doing it because they fear boredom or missing out – FOMO. If someone’s buying a lamp, they aren’t necessarily afraid of the dark, but they are afraid of not being able to see in their house. So the first step is understanding that everyone is driven by fear, whether explicit or not, and that understanding the root of that fear is important when trying to identify high urgency searches.
- Know the things that can go wrong in a customer’s life that will trigger fear. Emergencies breed urgency. That’s why you want to be there when things go bad. Like the E-commerce website example above, if you’re able to be the savior in a moment of despair, you will not only get the customer, they will thank you for doing your job. When does that ever happen?
Let’s think a little more about this. Let’s say that you own a solar company. And let’s say that you know that one of your competitors just went out of business. And let’s say that you know that that competitor installed crappy systems that were inevitably going to need maintenance. You know that those customers, who have those crappy solar systems, are going to freak out when they call that out of business company and realize they aren’t there to help them. You then know they are going to hop on the internet and search “(blank) solar company went out of business, what do i do”. These people are desperate to get their solar back online so they can keep saving money, and the fact that they have no one to talk to makes the urgency even higher. If you can make a landing page that caters to that search, they are going to be chomping at the bit to contact you, at least just to get advice from you on what to do.
3. Know how they will search for help. Like in that last example, there is a key phrase there that demonstrates the real urgency involved in the search. The “what do I do” is key because it demonstrates a desperation and lack of direction that is an indicator of their strong desire to find a solution quickly. They are trying to “do” something – they aren’t even looking for information. They are in a doing mode, a take action mode, even if that means calling someone else to fix the situation. If you can figure out those little add-ons, those little phrases of urgency, it can really make a difference in the urgency at which someone wants to contact you.
4. Know what action they will want to take. This can vary by industry, and by what problem your product or service can solve. In our E-commerce example, it would apply to an IT or web development company – and they will likely want to talk to a person, a chatbot, or submit a ticket. But say you are a plumbing company. A pipe bursts in someone’s house – and they need help ASAP. They probably won’t even want to talk to a chatbot or submit a ticket – they will want to speak to a person. In this case, you are likely to capture that urgency with a 24/7 emergency line, or someone on-call at times during business hours. If you are directing them to a chatbot, you are likely to lose that business.
Now, you may be thinking to yourself, “but I sell a product, and the examples you’ve used so far are for service-based companies and don’t apply to me.” Well, I would argue that the same principles can be used for selling any product that solves a problem.
For example, say you sell portable showers. You may think, well there’s no case in which someone would urgently need a portable shower. I would say, you’re not exploring all the use cases of your product.
In the portable shower example, it’s easy to think of a few cases in which someone would urgently need a portable shower. Maybe a hurricane is on the way, and they want a backup hot shower in case the power goes out and their hot water heater isn’t working. Maybe they are remodeling their bathroom and need a way to shower that isn’t at Planet Fitness. In those cases, they probably want a portable shower tomorrow, and therefore, there is a ton of urgency in their searches.
5. Know how to optimize for urgency. The thing that you’re probably thinking now is: “this is great and all, but most of these urgent searches will be captured by ads!” While they may capture some of the more common issues that you solve, the way to capture the most urgent searches is by creating content that is very specific. This can be location-specific, situation-specific, demographic-specific, situation-specific, issue-specific, product-specific, etc. – there’s a million ways you can narrow down to their exact issue. If you know SEO, you know that long-tail is much easier to rank for than short transactional searches, so if you’re able to meet their exact issue with a page optimized for it exactly – you will win, and they will trust you even more as you are speaking to their issue specifically.
So you can see that, when it comes to SEO, urgency is a very important factor to consider when you are building out content. When you create content that is highly specific and presents an actionable solution to a critical and urgent issue – you will see easier ranking, higher click-through rates, and higher conversion rates. While it may be difficult to discover those urgent searches, I would argue that if you really know the industry you are in, you will already know most of those issues, and you will be able to identify them if you really reach within the organization.
