Talking about SEO, one concept stands as a guiding principle: search intent. Most marketers are well-acquainted with this idea and understand the importance of aligning content with the intent behind a user’s search query.
However, while search intent has been explored extensively in articles and discussions—like these insightful pieces on how to satisfy search intent and the psychology of user searches—the conversation often falls short of offering clear, actionable strategies for keyword prioritization.
Much of the advice boils down to a simple formula: create content that spans the three primary stages of the buyer’s journey—informational, comparative, and transactional. This framework is typically visualized as a marketing funnel, with informational content at the top and transactional intent sitting at the bottom.
The common guidance is to “cover it all,” ensuring your site addresses the needs of users at every stage of the funnel. But here’s the catch: this approach is a recipe for inefficiency.
Through years of collaborating with brands to develop SEO-driven strategies, we’ve identified a critical insight that runs counter to this conventional wisdom: most businesses should not distribute their efforts evenly across the funnel. Instead, they should prioritize creating content for bottom-of-funnel keywords first and expand upward only after maximizing this high-value area.
Why this focus on the bottom? Simply put, resources in SEO are finite. And when it comes to return on investment (ROI), transactional queries—those at the bottom of the funnel—deliver significantly greater results compared to their mid- or top-funnel counterparts.
In the sections ahead, we’ll break down the data, reveal the ROI potential of bottom-of-funnel content, and explain why this strategic shift could redefine your SEO success.
The idea of creating content to cover all stages of the marketing funnel sounds appealing in theory. Who wouldn’t want to address every potential customer’s need, from casual browsers to ready-to-buy consumers? But the harsh reality is this: SEO resources are finite.
No company has unlimited writers to churn out high-quality content, unlimited strategists to perform keyword research and SERP analysis, or an endless budget to fund robust link-building campaigns. Even with advancements in AI-driven content generation, this limitation persists.
AI tools can certainly produce a staggering volume of content in record time, but quantity doesn’t guarantee success. Rankings are earned, not given. For every surge in AI-assisted production targeting the same keywords, Google is forced to differentiate content—and this differentiation is often based on two critical factors: content quality and backlinks.
Google has repeatedly emphasized its preference for content rich in originality, specific expertise, and personal insight. These are attributes that AI alone cannot replicate without human input. The best-performing pieces aren’t merely keyword-stuffed articles churned out at scale but thoughtfully crafted resources that stand out in depth, accuracy, and usefulness.
Backlinks remain a cornerstone of SEO. Even as content production grows more automated, links from authoritative, relevant sites signal trustworthiness and importance. In a sea of AI-generated content, building a strong backlink profile is likely to become even more crucial in determining rankings.
Ultimately, whether content is AI-generated or written by humans, SEO resources remain limited. There are only so many hours in the day, so much budget to allocate, and so much bandwidth to refine and promote content.
That’s why prioritization is essential. The most logical way to allocate these finite resources is to focus on what drives the highest return on investment (ROI). And based on our extensive experience, bottom-of-funnel, transactional keywords consistently outperform others in terms of driving leads and sales attributable to SEO efforts.
The undeniable advantage of bottom-of-funnel (BOF) keywords in conversion rates is one of the most compelling reasons to prioritize them in your SEO strategy. However, to substantiate this, the first step is measuring and tracking actual conversions from your SEO efforts.
While this may seem like a given, it’s surprising how many SEO and content teams fail to accurately track conversions. Often, the default assumption is that more traffic equals better performance, so strategies tend to focus on expanding traffic rather than measuring its real impact—conversions.
To measure conversions from SEO, the process is straightforward:
1. Define a Conversion: For SaaS or sales-based businesses, this could mean a lead form submission or trial start. For ecommerce, it’s typically an actual purchase.
2. Create a Goal: Set up conversion goals in your analytics platform to track these events.
3. Generate Reports: Use attribution models like first-click or last-click to track which landing pages are leading to conversions. Any data is better than none, so start by measuring this with whatever tools you have at hand.
Through our years of experience with numerous brands and hundreds of SEO efforts, we’ve seen a clear trend emerge.
Pages ranking for bottom-of-funnel keywords consistently convert at rates ranging from 1% to 5%. In stark contrast, content targeting top-of-funnel informational keywords typically converts at an astoundingly low 0.01% to 0.5%.
This is not a small gap—it's a massive difference. We observed this stark contrast in a data set from a software client across 60+ content pieces. The bottom-of-funnel content converted, on average, 25 times higher than the top-of-funnel content.
For example:
● Bottom of funnel content had a 4.78% conversion rate.
● Top of funnel content had a 0.19% conversion rate.
When we look at raw conversions, the difference becomes even more pronounced:
● 20 bottom-of-funnel posts generated 1,348 conversions.
● 40 top-of-funnel posts generated 397 conversions.
That’s more than three times the conversions from only half the number of posts.
Even more interestingly, many of the “top-of-funnel” posts in this study weren’t purely informational. We strategically targeted keywords that still held a degree of buying intent—essentially, they were “mid-funnel” queries. This highlights the inefficiency when the majority of a brand’s SEO efforts are focused entirely on top-of-funnel keywords.
In our opinion, it’s a significant missed opportunity to pour resources into top-of-funnel keywords when they deliver such minimal conversions.
The traditional push for top-of-funnel keywords usually centers around their high search volumes. The logic goes that by targeting these queries, you can get your brand in front of a large audience—many of whom may eventually need your product or service.
However, the data above paints a different picture. Even though top-of-funnel keywords might attract more traffic initially, the path from curiosity to conversion is long and fragmented. The journey for a potential customer might look something like this:
1. They search for an informational query.
2. They click on your link.
3. They read the content.
4. Some of them might remember your brand and return later or submit their email for additional resources like white papers or gated content.
5. A fraction of those users may engage with follow-up emails.
6. Finally, some may eventually need your product or service and reach out to you.
At each step of this journey, the conversion rate is low, meaning the overall conversion rate for top-of-funnel keywords is incredibly small.
Even if the search volume for these queries is higher than transactional keywords, the long conversion path simply doesn’t generate enough return to justify prioritizing these keywords. The sheer scale of traffic required to make a dent in your conversion numbers becomes an inefficient use of SEO resources.
Once we’ve established that targeting bottom of the funnel (BOFU) keywords is a smart strategy for focusing SEO efforts and maximizing ROI, the next question naturally arises: Which specific keywords should I target? In particular, what are the high-converting BOFU keywords that will truly drive business results?
Many marketers and SEO professionals have a narrow perspective on what qualifies as bottom of the funnel. They often consider just the obvious, transactional keywords, overlooking other types of high-intent searches that can lead to conversions.
In our experience, we’ve identified three key categories of bottom-of-funnel keywords—categories that many brands often miss but that hold significant potential. Let’s explore them:
These are the most well-known transactional keywords and typically the first set that comes to mind when targeting bottom-of-funnel traffic. For instance, phrases like “SEO software” or “best SEO tools” are highly conversion-driven keywords for companies offering SEO tools. These are the types of terms you’ll likely find in the product or service category of your website, such as on a homepage or dedicated product page.
While many brands successfully target category keywords, they often stop there—believing these keywords alone cover the bottom of the funnel. However, there are many other valuable bottom-of-funnel keywords that go beyond this narrow scope.
Next up, comparison keywords—search terms where users compare two or more products—can also generate high conversions. Examples include queries like “Salesforce vs Pipedrive” or “Nike vs Adidas women’s running shoes.”
Although some marketers classify these as mid-funnel keywords, in our experience, comparison searches often convert just as well as direct category terms. Users searching for product comparisons are typically deep in the decision-making process and close to a purchase. Therefore, it’s crucial for brands to aggressively target these terms, particularly when they stem from searches comparing their offerings with competitors. Ensuring your brand has dedicated pages for these terms can significantly boost your conversion rates.
Finally, we arrive at what we calljobs to be done (JTBD) keywords. These queries focus on solving specific problems, indicating high purchase intent, even if the user isn’t explicitly searching for a product comparison or category keyword. For instance, in the SEO software space, searches like “how to track search volume of keywords” or “how to monitor competitor keyword rankings” are excellent examples of JTBD queries.
These keywords are often ignored by brands, as they might not seem as directly tied to products. However, for companies offering solutions to these specific needs, these keywords can drive meaningful conversions. The conversion rate for JTBD keywords is usually slightly lower than for category or comparison keywords, but still significantly higher than for top-of-funnel queries with little to no purchase intent.
By identifying and targeting these three categories of bottom-of-funnel keywords, companies can tap into a broader range of high-converting search traffic—traffic that is often neglected in favor of more general, top-of-funnel terms.
Don’t waste valuable resources on low-intent terms.
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