Search Intent & SEO

For all their complexities, digital marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO) boil down to one simple concept: getting the correct pieces of information in front of an internet user when they want it.

But providing a satisfying web page to a user requesting something on Google is to A) have the proper content already on your website and B) understand the search intent of the person making it.

As someone who wants to convince business owners that you can find customers and clients for them through organic search, you must adjust your site’s content that addresses the various search intentions of people who will benefit from their help.

Answering their questions by providing them with specific, useful, meaningful and helpful evergreen pages and blog posts will win the search game.

What Is Search Intent?

Search intent (also called user intent, keyword intent, audience intent, etc.)  is the question that someone is really asking when they type words into the search bar. If someone types “no odor facial soap for women,” what they’re really asking is, “What scent-free facial soaps should I consider buying?”

Although the actual question could be varied. It could be:

What scent-free facial soap should I consider buying for myself?

Or:

What scent-free facial soap makes a good gift for my mother?

Every time someone types something into the search box of Google—or any search engine—they’re declaring that they have a problem they want to solve or a question they want to answer. 

The more that Google determines that your website and its content properly address users’ search intent, the higher the ranking on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

But while ranking well might increase your chances for a click, it doesn’t guarantee success. Relevancy, thoroughness, and helpfulness matter. If your content speaks to a user’s query, giving them an answer they like, you have a chance at the holy grail: a conversion. Your out-of-the-blue user becomes a customer.

A user’s search intent also changes, sometimes quickly. Let’s say someone needs to find new tires for their car. A beginning search may be: “best tires for Honda Accord.”

From there, the query could advance to “best tires for 2021 Honda Accord” and then to “best all-weather tires for 2021 Honda Accord” and again to “best all-weather low profile tires for 2021 Honda Accord.”

In quick succession, the user has gone from a keyword-type search to a long-tail keyword search. And to satisfy that last user intent, you must have content on your website that specifically discusses a quality tire for a 2021 Accord.

If you can’t help with this query, one of your competitors probably will.

Why Is Search Intent Important?

Establishing search intent is important because Google’s No. 1 priority is to match a user’s query to the content most likely to provide an answer.

The Google bible for ranking SERPs is its Quality Rater Guidelines, a long, detailed how-to-rank content document that Google raters use to grade web pages across the vast spectrum of the world wide web.

Each piece of content on your site should have a specific purpose that is unique to the site. It should answer at least one relevant question about your business, your products, or your services. As you develop a strategy for adding new content to the website or replacing/improving existing content, compile one or more personas of the people who find you through search queries.

Is your target audience more male or female? What age? What education level? What are they usually searching for? Answering these questions helps you build a stronger connection between your site and your users. And it’s that connection that leads them deeper into the marketing funnel and eventually earns you conversions — and turns users into customers.

Whoever helps strategize content for your website should understand the nuances of intent targeting and how to measure success. Metrics to watch include:

• Page views
• Featured snippets
• Bounce rates
• Keyword rankings
• Site authority
• Natural backlinks

Types of Search Intent

Although every Google search is unique to the user and situation, digital marketers put search intent into one of four categories. The four major types of search intent are:

• Informational intent: These users are looking for basic facts and figures about the topic at hand. They’re looking for answers to a question.
• Commercial intent: This is one step up from the initial query. People here know the basics but are now looking for more specifics.
• Transactional intent: This search is done by someone who has decided about a product or service and is ready to act, ready to buy. These users convert more often.
• Navigational intent: These searches come from people who want to find a specific site to answer their questions. Example: someone is looking for a newspaper article about a local celebrity and wants to see pages from that newspaper’s website.

In reality, these four groups overlap. For instance, someone may want to know two things at the same time. One example: someone wants to order a pizza from a local restaurant (transactional) but wants to make sure the restaurant is open (navigational).

Or a search query of: best restaurant in Arlington Virginia (informational and commercial).

How to Optimize Intent for SEO

Optimizing your website for SEO means having content on the site that answers every question a customer could ask as well as content that shows your site visitors that you know every detail about the business that you’re in. It also means honing your most-viewed pages and highest-converting pages to make them relevant for users and friendly for search.

In short, you want to match those pages to the intent of the user that finds them in search. The best matches rank well on Google.

We encourage you to incorporate a couple of practices into your regular business routines:

• Type your top keywords into Google and look closely at the results. What pages (and websites/businesses) does Google say are in the top five? Read them. What do those pages have that your pages don’t? How is information structured and presented? 
• Look at what else shows up in the SERPs from Google: Featured Snippets, Answer Boxes, People Also Asked, Map Packs, etc. What competitors are winning those

For your site, focus on ensuring your content addresses user intent for the keyword(s) you want to rank for. Make your content relevant to the person it’s written (and designed!) for.

Balancing Monthly Search Volume (MSV) and Search Intent

In evaluating online success, you must look at search intent as it relates to search volume. Monthly search volume (MSV) measures how often a keyword gets typed into a search engine each month. This metric tells you how often that keyword, and others, bring people to your site. You would want to compare your high-volume keywords alongside the keywords that are driving conversion.

In building a keyword strategy for your content, you want to have a healthy blend of high-intent keywords and high-volume keywords.

Odds are your high-volume keywords are the same keywords your competitors have, which is probably the same for non-competitors who are also in your industry around the country. That makes it difficult to rank highly for these keywords. (And if you want to use them in a paid-ad campaign, these keywords cost more to bid on.)

Plus, traffic from high-volume keywords may not hold much value. Yes, you’re getting page views.? But how good are page views if your bounce rate is high and your conversion rate is low?

High-intent keywords are easier to rank for, especially if you have high-quality, competitive content that directly addresses the keyword’s intent. Even better: high-intent keywords drive conversion rates higher.

Learn More About Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is part science, part art. We like to construct creative, one-of-a-kind campaigns based on hard data — and then adjust accordingly when more data comes in. We pay attention to every part of the online brand, from how it looks to how it performs.

We help our marketing clients in two major areas: paid media and SEO.

• Paid media: Google ads, Facebook ads, Bing ads, remarketing ads and paid ads on LinkedIn, Instagram and other platforms are central to successful brand-building and brand awareness. Our paid media services team builds, executes, manages and evaluates paid campaigns
• SEO: Our SEO services are about leveraging the client’s advantages in the market and capitalizing on website strength.

 We welcome you to read our thoughts on how to rank on Google by crafting content designed to win the Google game of matching a search query with a page that answers the question at hand. Or find a topic on our blog that’s more relevant to your situation.

The power of our clients’ brands is measured by their ability to connect with their customers in an efficient and meaningful way.

Our job is to show them how.