Understanding keyword intent, their types & the benefits of intent targeting

SEO optimization is a great focus to increase traffic for your website, but is basic optimization giving you desirable results? Maybe not. And that’s because you need to look at the stats- Google processes over 40,000 search queries per second on an average. In this immense traffic rate, it is highly plausible that your neatly maintained content and website architecture isn’t making the cut. 

Users are not very particular about typing out entire searches and often use a couple of words to find their results. Google takes the best suitable interpretation of that result and just provides the relevant results. Now, if you never thought you would need to work on meeting search queries… then think again. A whopping 51 percent of the traffic is usually organic, and about 39 percent of the visitors tend to be influenced by a relevant search 

Let’s dive into the nitty-gritty of how this realm of determining search intent in SEO, but before that, we will quickly look at what search intent is 

What Is Search Intent?

Search intent also referred to as keyword intent, is the actual goal of the user when using a search engine.

Simply put, when you enter some search term in Google, what is it that you are looking for? You might just want to do your research, compare some things, or buy. That’s the search intent behind your query.

Search intent classification is distributed in three categories, as below.

1.      Informational

2.      Navigational

3.      Transactional

4.      Freebies

Let’s understand each of these types of search queries a little better.

Informational Intent

An informational search query is used when the user is looking for an answer to their specific query. These are usually in the form of questions. A majority of the searches are usually of this kind, as most of the users of the internet are on the lookout for information. These queries are when the user has a specific question or simply wants to know more about something specific.

Navigational Intent

A navigational search query is when a person wants to go to a specific site or page. People who often search for social media sites are looking to easily log in to their profile, e.g. Facebook login.

This kind of search activates additional SERP features including Adwords, Top stories and a Knowledge Panel. Additionally, Google provides site links to lead to various sections of the webpage, in order to be coherent with the search intent. These searches are often location-specific too.

Transactional Intent

The transactional intent search query is of the doers. These users have done their research and are looking to buy the product they’re looking for or sign up for a newsletter. This is your website’s chance to design the perfect landing pages for the person to eventually buy what you have to offer.

Freebies

If you have some version of your products/services that you are offering for free, then this is an opportunity you cannot miss. Even if you aren’t offering any, create sources to gauge awareness and needs. This can be greatly used for lead generation and can greatly impact if curated in relevant lists.

Let’s understand the intent hierarchy better through our user intent analysis funnel

Understanding Keyword Intent in SEO

Having looked at the aforementioned main classifications of types of searches, we need to understand an underlying aspect of keyword intent mapping that needs to be understood quite well in order to optimize your SEO to meet these web search requirements. And that aspect is the keyword intent and its implications.

The words that are used in search queries gives information about the user’s intent. For instance, if they are using words like buy, deal, offer, they are most certainly in the mood to make a purchase. These are technically high intent search terms.

Moreover, people often search for things that they plan to eventually buy. If the user is looking for information and uses similar words like how-to, the fastest way to, you can understand that the intent is an informational one. This is the essential difference between high intent and low intent keywords.

Optimize Your Content To Match Search Intent

It is a crucial task to ensure that your audience is satisfied with the landing pages and that they match their search intents. You don’t want the customers to be landed on your product page if they are just looking to gather information. The vice-versa scenario being that of smothering your user with excessive content instead of speeding the process of making the purchase when they make a transactional search.

Having known the background of the various search intents and how search intent analysis is important in SEO, you can now proceed to design your content to do your intent-based search optimization.

Informational Intent Optimization

As we understood, informational searches are usually followed by interrogative phrases like “how-to” or “what is”.

Hence, it is imperative during the content creation, to place the questions relevant to what you offer, in the headings and titles to get higher traffic.

Consequently, your answers should follow in the first paragraph, addressing those queries directly. This creates coherence for your website when someone is looking for something similar in the browser.

Additionally, If your solutions can be implemented in a certain then you can also provide a “How to” to achieve the “What is” that they were learning.

Navigational Intent Optimization

The primary requirement for optimizing navigational search intent is to make you have landing pages for – your brand, services, as well as the homepage.

Strategic use of titles, subheadings, and meta descriptions with the product or brand names gives better results than unbranded ones.

Solve the queries by addressing the questions in your headings and empirically explaining the solution with correct brand placement.

Transactional Intent Optimization

The transactional searches are all about conversion, and it is your task to make it efficient and clear.

Visually make this landing page appealing. A clear design with good quality image, crisp content and correct spacing simplifies the understanding for the user. Express your benefits and value through less wordy and more graphic means.

The CTA is the most important of these pages. Hence, make sure you make it simple yet obvious for the user to click to avail of what is offered.

The text needs to be concise and meaningful. Try limiting words to bare information and visually pleasing in a manner of pointers. The consumer needs the reassurance, but shouldn’t be confused or bored before making the final move.

Benefits of Intent Targeting

Search intent exponentially increases the chances of your website to be present in relevant searches for users through the mechanism of efficient semantic SEO.

Not only does this result in more qualified traffic for your transactional landing pages, but it will also rake in more traffic for the informational pages as well, increasing brand awareness.

1.      More traffic: If the user truly likes the experience, they’re more likely to engage more.

2.      Larger audience reach: Google often intelligently understands the intent optimization and shows your pages for all the queries your content answers.

3.      Lesser bounce rates: when the users get what they were looking for, they stay on the pages.

Is your content optimized to understand user intent?

It is highly probable that your content can be configured according to search intent, to yield enhanced traffic and results by developing your niche search intent strategy.

Use Google Analytics and Google Console to evaluate your existing content through better search intent statistics, and amalgamate the methodology of search intent modeling when you do your keyword research during content creation.

For any business query, feel free to send us an email at shwetaj@bitwiseonline.com or call on +91 9879528311, we will get back to you as soon as possible.