Good marketing is all about empathy. The smartest SEO strategies are those that are aligned with the search engine’s goal; to provide the most relevant result to queries.
As such, one essential aspect of building your online marketing strategy around search engines is to know your audience. With this knowledge, not only can you understand how your target markets look for your products online, but you can effectively reach them too.
Search engines are tools that are driven by the user’s intent. And an understanding of that intent can help you keep those users. That’s where search intent comes in.
What is Search Intent?
Search intent refers to the reason people conduct a specific search.
In other words, what do users want to see whenever they type that question, product, or business name in the search engine’s query box? That’s the big question.
Google’s ultimate goal is to improve its users’ experience, and this involves consistently displaying the most relevant result to queries.
As such, websites that fit the search term, including the search intent of a specific search query are rewarded with a high ranking on the SERP.
That means, your post or page must always fit your audience’s intent.
4 Types of Search Intent
Here are a few examples of search intent that you might want to focus on.
1. Informational Intent
Since most searches on the Internet are to seek more information, informational intent is reasonably the most common search intent.
Whether its information about the weather or finding an apple pie recipe, people always want to know more about specific topics.
2. Navigational Intent
The navigational intent describes individuals that are searching for a particular website. For example, people who type “Twitter” in the query box are often on their way to the social networking site.
As you may have guessed, ranking high on navigational intent is only useful when your business, product, or service is already known.
3. Transaction Intent
This refers to people who search the internet with the intention to buy a good or hire a service.
The query usually takes this form; “where to buy a diamond ring in Houston.”
A type of transactional intent, but with a sort of timeline is the Commercial Investigation. Searchers in this category want to buy a product, but in the future. So, they research their product using the search engine. This is the perfect intent for guides, reviews, and discussions on different topics.
4. Keyword Intent
In some cases, searchers may supply information about their intent using keywords. For example, words like discount and deals imply that the searcher is likely to buy the product.
Now that you understand the types of search intent, there’s just one question to ask;
How Can You Optimize For Search Intent?
While it’s probably a good idea to optimize your landing page first, your product page is just as important. Consider optimizing your product page for commercially driven keywords.
For example, if you sell cakes, you may want to optimize a product page for keywords like “buy a red velvet cake”.
Also, you can write and optimize an article on the search term for your blog.
In the end, the best way to determine searchers’ intent is to ask them. So, create a small pop-up survey containing questions about what people were searching for.
That’ll give you an insight into how to increase your rank on the search engine result page, and ultimately reach more audience.
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