Liz MooreheadA lot of keywords look better on paper than they do in a business.
In fact, those “better on paper” keywords remind me of this guy I went on one date with in my 20s. We’ll call him Cliff. Cliff was hot, had a job, did his own laundry, knew how to cook, had his own place, and did I mention he was hot?
But somehow he was still single, which was… odd. Within one hour of meeting him, however, I knew why: he never stopped talking about himself or high school lacrosse. Needless to say, there was no second date.
Keywords can be a lot like our boy, Cliff. They can look like a no-brainer: they have search volume, they look good on a spreadsheet, and they make content teams feel productive and SEO dashboards feel loved. Then the traffic shows up, pokes around, does absolutely nothing useful, and leaves you explaining why “visibility is growing” to people who were hoping for a slightly more revenue-shaped outcome.
That is usually where buyer intent keywords enter the conversation.
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Some keywords bring in people who are curious, bored, comparing, procrastinating, or conducting the kind of fake-shopping research we have all done while avoiding something else. Other keywords bring in people who are much closer to actually buying. They are looking for a product, a provider, a price, a comparison, a review, a deal, or one final piece of reassurance before they make a decision.
That second bucket of keywords — buyer intent keywords — are what we’re interested in, right?
If you’re leading marketing at a high-growth ecommerce brand, you don’t need more traffic for the sake of having traffic. You need more of the right traffic. That means understanding which keywords signal real buying intent, what those keywords tend to look like, and how to use them in a way that helps search, content, and paid efforts pull their weight.
By the end of this article, you should be able to define buyer intent keywords clearly, recognize the signals that usually point to stronger purchase intent, and use those keywords more intelligently in your strategy.
What are buyer intent keywords? (definition)
Buyer intent keywords are search terms that suggest a person is actively considering a purchase and is closer to taking action than someone doing broad research. They’re also sometimes called “buyer keywords” or “high-intent keywords.”
In plain English, these are the searches that sound less like “I’m passively curious about what you’re doing, but mostly because I’m bored and tired of doomscrolling on TikTok” and more like “I actually need help deciding what to buy, where to buy it, and whether or not there are other options I should consider.”
That doesn’t mean every buyer intent keyword is fully bottom-funnel and ready to convert on the spot. Some are closer to the transaction than others:
- A “best” keyword often shows commercial intent.
- A “buy now” keyword is more obviously transactional.
- A “pricing” keyword can mean someone is qualifying whether the offer fits their budget.
- A “review” or “vs” keyword often means the person is narrowing the field and getting closer to a decision.
The main thing to understand is that buyer intent lives on a spectrum. Some keywords are clearly stronger buying signals than others.
Buyer intent keyword examples (categorized)
Buyer intent keywords often include modifiers that signal comparison, evaluation, pricing, or purchase readiness. For example, you’ll see a lot of the same words and patterns: buy, best, review, comparison, cheap, discount, coupon, pricing, and near me.
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But there are a few common categories that show up a lot:
Purchase-focused modifiers
These are the obvious ones:
- buy running shoes online
- protein powder discount
- standing desk for sale
- affordable linen sheets
Comparison keywords
These often matter more than teams think:
- brooklinen vs parachute sheets
- best magnesium gummies
- shopify vs bigcommerce pricing
- best espresso machine under 500
Review and evaluation keywords
These can be strong mid-to-late-funnel signals:
- athletic greens review
- best stroller reviews
- does ritual prenatal work
- saatva mattress review
Pricing keywords
These can be especially useful in B2B or higher-consideration ecommerce:
- hydration powder pricing
- laser hair removal cost
- custom sofa budget
- what does a standing desk cost
Local or near-me modifiers
These usually signal practical buying intent:
- office chairs near me
- where to buy patio furniture near me
- vitamin shop near me
Now, do the presence of these modifiers guarantee these folks are ready to immediately fork over their hard-earned cash in exchange for what you’re selling? Of course, not. Humans remain maddeningly capable of typing in “best” and then doing absolutely nothing about it. Still, these patterns generally point to stronger commercial intent than broad informational searches.
How to identify buyer intent keywords
First, look at the wording of the query. If the phrase includes pricing, reviews, comparisons, or obvious purchase modifiers, that is a good first clue.
Second, look at the SERP. Yes, with the recent news that Google is shifting toward a more AI-first approach to search results, this is more complicated. But you need to evaluate the playing field. If the results are full of product pages, category pages, comparison articles, listicles with commercial framing, or review content, that tells you a lot about what Google believes the user wants.
Search intent tools can help, but manually reviewing search results is still one of the better ways to understand how a keyword behaves.
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Third, look at the page types that are ranking. If you see product roundups, “best” content, pricing pages, brand comparisons, or product category pages, you’re usually in stronger commercial territory than if the results are mostly beginner guides and definitions.
Fourth, pay attention to where the keyword sits in the buyer journey. Terms like buy, get a quote, pricing, and near me usually align with later-stage decision-making, while broader educational terms tend to sit earlier.
Put those together and you get a much stronger read than keyword volume alone will ever give you.
Common buyer intent keyword mistakes we see with ecommerce
One common mistake is assuming every high-volume keyword with a commercial flavor is a buyer intent keyword worth chasing. Some terms look promising and still attract very mixed intent. This is where you need to do your research, like we discussed in the previous section.
Also, in your quest for bottom-of-the-funnel glory, don’t ignore mid-intent terms like reviews, best-of lists, and comparisons because they aren’t as obviously transactional as “buy now” queries. Of course, bottom-of-the-funnel, high-intent keywords are the lowest hanging fruit, but you should also review which of your potential buyers need just a bit more nurturing to get over the finish line.
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Finally, don’t shoehorn a buyer intent keyword into a page that’s structurally incapable of converting a visitor. If you have a weak page that you’re hoping will become a gateway to other things by slapping a fancy keyword on there, you’ll be disappointed. A keyword can’t fix broken landing pages that need more substantive optimization work.
Or, more simply: good SEO can’t fix crappy websites.
Unfortunately, you also need to factor in insurance, registration, gas, maintenance, the occasional (i.e., “monthly”) speeding ticket you rack up entering the Baltimore Harbour Tunnel, because you’ll never learn your lesson… and so on. All of that combined is your true car spend.
So, if you’re trying to understand the true efficiency of a campaign rather than just the efficiency of media spend in isolation, this may be the move. Sure, it’ll also lower the ROAS number, which is exactly why some people prefer to keep the formula narrower and the mood more upbeat. But that broader version is usually more commercially honest, at least to me.
Still, it’s your choice. Neither approach is automatically wrong. You just need to be clear about which version you’re using, because “our ROAS is 4.2” means something different depending on what’s included in the spend.
What to remember when you use buyer intent keywords
The main thing to hold onto is that buyer intent keywords help you separate searchers who are learning from searchers who are choosing.
That doesn’t mean you should ignore broader informational content. Early-stage search still matters. Educational content can support awareness, trust, and discovery in ways that are strategically important. It does mean you should know which keywords are more likely to connect to revenue and treat them with the level of care that deserves.
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If you’re trying to grow a high-growth ecommerce brand, your keyword strategy will automatically get better when you stop asking only how many people search for a term and start asking what kind of person is behind that search and how close they are to doing something useful.
That’s where buyer intent keywords earn their keep.
Be smart about search volume
A better way to approach keyword strategy is to stop treating all search volume like equal opportunity.
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When a keyword comes up, pressure-test it with a few practical questions:
- Does this query suggest curiosity or a real buying process?
- What kind of page is most likely to satisfy the search?
- If we win this traffic, is it likely to move the business forward?
- Are we targeting the term because it is commercially useful or because the volume flatters us?
- Does the page we have, or plan to build, actually deserve this visitor?
Buyer intent keywords push you toward smarter decision-making. They help you prioritize terms that reflect real buying behavior, shape content around the questions people ask before they choose, and spend less time congratulating yourself for traffic that was never especially likely to convert in the first place.
