High intent keywords are search terms typed by someone who has already decided to solve the problem and is now choosing who to pay. "Best LinkedIn automation tool for a two person team" is one. "What is LinkedIn automation" is not. The gap between those two queries is the difference between a reader and a pipeline.
I run a LinkedIn prospecting agency and I am building an outbound product with my cofounder, so I spend my week on both sides of this: the pages we write, and the sentences prospects type before they contact anyone. The vocabulary overlaps more than most SEO advice admits.
Below: what makes a term high intent, how to score a list without a subscription to anything, why volume tools mislead you in B2B, and which page each term deserves.
What high intent keywords mean
A high intent keyword is a query where the searcher's next step is a decision, not more reading. Intent is about the person, not the words, but the words leak. Someone comparing two vendors writes differently from someone trying to understand a category for the first time.
Three groups sit at the top:
- Transactional. The person wants to pay. "Pricing", "cost per user", "buy", "quote", "free trial".
- Commercial. The person is picking between named options. "Best", "top", "vs", "alternative", "review".
- Problem aware with a purchase attached. The person has a specific job to do and expects a tool at the end of it. "How to automate follow ups on LinkedIn", "software to track job posts by company".
Everything else is informational. Informational terms are worth writing, but they belong in a different part of the plan and they get judged on different numbers.
The shortest definition I use: if a good answer to the query is a product page, the term is high intent. If a good answer is a paragraph, it is not.
The three markers of a high intent search term
You usually need two of these three before a term earns a page.
A commercial modifier. Pricing, cost, buy, demo, trial, quote, best, top, vs, alternative, review, near me. The modifier is what turns a topic into a transaction.
A named thing. A category or a competitor. "Software" is a topic. "LinkedIn automation software for agencies" is a purchase. "Expandi alternative" is a purchase with a shortlist already attached.
A qualifier that filters buyers. Team size, market, budget, geography, an integration, a constraint. "CRM with LinkedIn integration" tells you what the person already runs and what they will ask you in the first call.
A term carrying all three, something like "HeyReach alternative for solo founders", has almost no monthly volume and converts better than anything else you will publish. That trade is the whole game in B2B, where your entire market is a few thousand companies and a term with 20 searches can be worth more than one with 2,000.
The intent ladder, from browsing to buying
Sorting a list by ladder rung is faster than sorting it by volume, and it tells you what the page has to do to win.
| Rung | What the searcher wants | Example | What the page must do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buy now | A price and a next step | "linkedin automation pricing", "buy sales navigator seats" | Show the number, no form in front of it |
| Choose | A shortlist and a verdict | "best intent data providers", "expandi vs heyreach" | Compare honestly, say where you lose |
| Fix | A method, then a tool | "how to automate linkedin follow ups" | Solve it in the page, mention the tool once |
| Learn | A definition | "what is buyer intent" | Define it, then link up the ladder |
Most teams write the bottom rung first because it is easy, then wonder why the traffic does not convert. Start at the top and work down. The top two rungs are also the ones a competitor cannot copy in an afternoon, because they need a real opinion and real product knowledge.
Score a list in twenty minutes
Volume tools label intent with a guess. You can do better in twenty minutes with the actual search results, which is the only place intent is really recorded.
For each term, open the first page of results in a US search and score four things out of one point each:
- Result shape. Are the top five results product pages, comparison pages or pricing pages? One point. All definitions and dictionary entries? Zero, whatever the tool labels it.
- Ads. Is anyone paying for the term? Someone spending money on it every day has already tested whether it converts.
- Vocabulary. Does the query contain a modifier, a named thing, or a hard qualifier? One point per marker, capped at one.
- Your right to win. Can you say something on this page that the current top five cannot? A price you publish, a limit you admit, a workflow you run weekly. If not, you are writing the eleventh copy of the same article.
Three points or more, write it. Two, park it. Less, leave it to someone with a bigger domain. This scoring costs nothing, uses no subscription, and it beats any intent column in a keyword tool because it reads the same evidence Google already acted on.
Google's own guidance on people first content says the same in different words: the page has to be worth the click for the person typing the query. Their guidance for AI features in Search adds the part that matters for high intent terms specifically, since a direct answer near the top of the page is what gets quoted when an assistant summarizes the result.
Where keyword tools mislead you in B2B
Four traps, all of which cost me time before I stopped trusting the columns.
Volume hides the buyers. In a niche market, a high intent term often reports 10 to 50 searches a month, or nothing at all. Tools round small numbers to zero. Some of the best terms we have look like empty rows.
The intent label is inferred, not measured. Two tools regularly disagree on the same term. The search results do not disagree with themselves.
Difficulty scores describe the average competitor, not you. A term with a difficulty of 30 is easy if the pages ranking for it are thin and none of them publishes a price. Look at what ranks, not at the number.
Volume mixes audiences. "Sales automation jobs" and "sales automation" share a root and share nothing else. Job seekers, students and analysts inflate a number that has no buyers in it.
The fix is boring: pull the terms from the tool, then judge them by hand against the results. Tools are good at finding candidates and bad at ranking them.
The page each high intent keyword deserves
A term is only worth something once it has a page shaped for it.
A pricing term gets your pricing page, with the number visible. Hiding the price to capture a lead loses the visitor who was ready to pay, and that visitor is the rarest one you get.
A comparison term gets one page per competitor, not a single grouped page. Someone searching for one product wants a page about that product. Say where the competitor is better, because the reader already knows and admitting it is what makes the rest of the page credible.
A "best tools" term gets a listicle with a stated criterion for the order. Ranking by nothing is why most of those pages get ignored.
A "how to" term gets a page that solves the problem without your product, then names the product once at the end. If the page only works when the reader buys something, it is an ad.
I keep the copy ready term patterns for all four shapes in a separate list, sorted by tier, in buyer keywords. This page is the scoring method, that one is the raw material.
The same words show up outside search
This is the part most articles on this topic skip, and the reason this page sits on an outbound product's site.
A person with high purchase intent does not only type it into Google. They write it on LinkedIn, in a job post, in a comment under a competitor's announcement. "We are looking for a tool that does X", "any recommendation to replace Y", "hiring an SDR to build outbound from scratch". Same vocabulary, same moment in the buying cycle, except this time the words come attached to a name, a company and a job title.
That makes commercial intent keywords useful as monitoring terms, not just ranking terms:
- Watch job ads for the phrases that only exist when your problem exists.
- Watch posts and comments for the modifiers: alternative, replacing, switching, recommendation, looking for.
- Watch who views your profile in the week after you publish on the exact topic they are searching.
The tools that watch for that behavior and flag it are compared in buying signals software. Turning a signal into a first message and a sequence is outbound sales automation, which is the operational half of everything on this page.
Where Sendable fits
Sendable, the product I am building with my cofounder, works on the outbound side of what this page describes. It watches a set of signals (job posts, webinars, profile visits, first degree network activity), filters the profiles against the ideal customer you describe, and pushes the matching ones into a LinkedIn sequence you built in a visual workflow. Published pricing: $49 per sender per month from 1 to 4 senders, $39 from 5 to 25, $1,000 a month for unlimited senders.
What it does not do: keyword research, rankings, or anything on your website. It does not send email either, it is LinkedIn only. The search half stays with you. See getsendable.io for what it covers.
FAQ
What are high intent keywords?
High intent keywords are search terms typed by someone close to a decision rather than someone still learning. They usually combine a commercial modifier such as pricing, best, vs or alternative with a named product or category, and often a qualifier like team size or an integration. They carry low volume and convert far better than informational terms.
What is the difference between high intent and low intent keywords?
Low intent terms ask what something is. High intent terms ask which one to buy, what it costs, or how to fix a specific problem today. The reliable test is the search results page: if the top results are product, pricing and comparison pages, the term is high intent. If they are definitions, it is not.
How do I find high intent search terms for my market?
Start with your Search Console queries filtered by commercial modifiers, add your competitors' names, and read the page titles that already rank for the terms you want. Then score each candidate against the live search results rather than trusting a tool's intent column. Write the top two rungs of the ladder first.
Are low volume high intent keywords worth targeting?
Yes, and in B2B they are usually the only ones worth targeting. If your total market is a few thousand companies, a term with 20 monthly searches and a competitor name in it can be worth more than one with 2,000 searches from students. Judge a term by who types it, not by the number beside it.
Do high intent keywords work for outbound as well as SEO?
Yes. The same phrases appear in LinkedIn posts, comments and job ads, where they come attached to a named person at a named company. Monitoring those words gives you people with visible intent, which is a better starting point for a first message than a static list bought from a database.