Understanding Search Intent

Search engines go through many phases in identifying how a page best matches its searcher’s intent. This is due to the dynamic SEO industry constantly formulating adaptable strategies to cope with user demands and expectations. However, we can’t become so immersed in chasing new and advanced tactics as this consequently overlooks fundamental SEO principles.

What is Search Intent?

This concept refers to why people conduct a specific search. It’s a complicated topic supported by scientific studies and research. Thus, analysing a searcher’s intent is something we should understand. There are some notable questions we should consider in identifying audience and searcher behaviour before targeting keywords and themes for SEO strategy, such as knowing if a site will rank on a particular query, and what these rankings will accomplish.

Aside from coming up with questions like the abovementioned, identifying the different types of searcher intent is the basis for any successful SEO strategy. Here’s a list of segments to help us grasp a better understanding of what searchers are looking for:

Informational Intent - There are searchers whose queries focus on seeking to learn information about a topic. They prefer content-rich pages that can answer their questions quickly and clearly, which is often reflected on the search results page.

Navigational Intent - Searchers of this type of intent already have an idea on which company or brand they are looking for, but still need assistance navigating to their desired page. Therefore, these searches involve queries that include brand names or services. In turn, the target pages are homepages or mainstream coverage of brands.

Transactional Intent - On the other hand, searchers who are looking into making a purchase, type in queries commonly associated with transactional searches giving importance to prices and sales. Search results for this segment are purely commercial pages such as subscription, products and service websites.

Commercial Intent - This is a combination of informational and transactional purpose. Such occurrence takes place when a searcher plans to make a purchase but also requires information from pages to help them come up with a decision.

Conclusion

With these four ways, we already have a clear picture of what drives search intent. It is then much easier to understand what our searchers want. In respect to ranking pages out of queries and aside from understanding the searcher’s intent, other contributing factors would be Google’s take on them and the type of results people search. Furthermore, being aware of what ranking will accomplish puts the context of having more webpage traffic which also leads to a particular set of expectations. All of these factors should help you reinforce optimisation of pages for specific keywords and themes towards your marketing goal.