In an article on Search Engine Land earlier this year, Ted Ives dives into designing keyword funnels to understand search intent:

Often I find myself with too many keywords to handle; even as little as 5,000 keywords broken down into 300 categories, for instance, is still not a very manageable set.

In these cases, I like to take the keyword categories and bundle the categories themselves into a *secondary* category that represents the "funnel" stage that the keyword category belongs to.

Marketers are told to think of a customer as being in one of various "funnel" stages at any given time, and even if you're not systematic about it, you probably already think of brand terms as being "lower funnel" and research-type terms as being "upper funnel".

Most readers are doubtless familiar with models such as "Attention-Interest-Desire-Action", and other 4, 5, and 6 stage funnels which are pretty standard fare for marketers.

After performing my initial keyword categorization (sort of into micro-categories), I like to categorize the categories themselves into a total of *ten* funnel stages I've developed, which are organized around a "problem/solution" mental model.
Below, I've shown individual keywords belonging to each funnel stage for a variety of B-to-C funnels.

These keywords presented could be actual keywords, but I think they are more appropriately thought of as representing *categories* of keywords:

Ten stages may seem like a lot of detail, but organizing keyword categories into these stages:

1. Forces you to really try to understand searcher's intent.
2. Gives you a sense of where the holes in your keyword research are from a funnel perspective.
3. Resonates with clients or management and is a great way to discuss and understand a business.

For example, after going through this exercise with one client, to my great surprise, they told me that stage 2 (" Suspicion There May Be a Problem ") was almost the sole focus of their existing marketing.

Their strategy is to pull in searchers looking for help identifying their problem, establishing them early as a trusted brand in the eyes of the searcher. This client has found that organic and offline conversions then naturally follow. Although very much a one-trick pony approach which I would not recommend for most businesses, it works great in their market.

Below is another version of the funnel with examples that are more B-to-B oriented, for those interested in that perspective; we'll now run through the funnel stages, explain the thinking behind each of them, and discuss which stages you should consider addressing in your marketing mix.

Overall this is going to give you a good sense of how customers are thinking about your products, and offer you the ability to deliver the right content at the right time, nurturing visitors through your conversion funnel.