Search intent: an SEO factor to optimize

[tongfkymm44]

I can’t stress enough how important search intent is for SEO . I’m not exaggerating when I say that if you want to rank, understanding and creating content with search intent in mind is critical.

Don't believe me? Check this out:

SEO
What you see above is a 677% growth in organic traffic to one of Ahrefs’ landing pages in just 6 months.

How did they achieve this? They made small changes to the page to align with search intent.

In this post you will learn:

What is search intent?
Why is search intent important for SEO?
The 4 types of search intent
How to predict search intent?
How to optimize for search intent
What is search intent?
Search intent is the “why” behind a search query. In other words, why did the user perform that search? Are they looking to make a purchase? Or are they looking for a specific website?

To help you understand this concept a little better, let's take a look at a specific dental email database lists user's search history. Your job will be to tell me what the intention behind each search is.

(Don't worry, it's a very simple exercise!)

The search was “dromedary dromedary”:

Are you looking for photos of two dromedaries?
You are trying to access the page dromedariodromedariodromedario.com and you have not bothered to finish typing the full URL
He is trying to buy a pair of dromedaries
The last option seems less likely, doesn't it? We'll come back to that later.

Why is search intent important for SEO?
Google's goal is to provide users with the most relevant results for their searches.

How do we know? For starters, Google's success as a business is based on exactly this: its ability to show you relevant results. You only have to look at Bing to understand what happens when a search engine gives you few, low-quality and irrelevant results. Virtually no one uses it, which translates into less advertising revenue.

Google also states that its mission is to “organize all the information available in the world and make it universally accessible and usable.”

Google mission
So if you are trying to rank for “best credit card” don’t try to force your landing page into the SERPs because you won’t be able to. Google knows what users want to see when they make this query and what they are looking for is precisely information: blog posts, comparisons, rankings, etc.

Relevance is the foundation of SEO success.

The 4 types of search intent
1. Information searches
These are those in which users ask very specific questions. They are looking for an answer to a specific topic.

2. Navigational searches
These are search engines used by users to find a specific site and usually include the brand/name of the product or service. For example: “buy at Mercadona”.

3. Transactional searches
These are searches in which users have a clear intention to buy, or rather, to complete a specific action. For example: “buy a cheap car” or “download a free antivirus”.

4. Business Research Searches
In this case, users do not intend to search, but they are looking for information about specific products or services, such as “best electric motorcycles.”

How to predict search intent?
It is often very obvious due to the words of the search. For example, if the user searches for “buy bitcoins” it is perfectly understood that what they are looking for is to buy cryptocurrencies, therefore it is a transactional search, but if they search for “how to tie a tie” they are looking for an answer, therefore it is informative.

The answer is in the SERPs
Have you ever done a Google search and seen something like this?

Featured-snippet-1
This is known as a “featured snippet” and is one of the many formats that Google displays in a search. Other examples are:

Shopping results
AdWords Ads
Related Questions
Video results
Why are featured snippets important? Google shows you certain formats more or less frequently depending on search intent. This means that we can use these formats to predict search intent.