Search Intent Optimization: The Complete Guide

What is search intent

Search intent is the motivation behind the search. You have to understand why somebody is actually searching for the topic you are writing about. You have to know the intrinsic reasons behind the search. And how you can potentially rank for the keyword and monetize it.

When writing an article for ranking in search results. First, you must look at the collective consciousness of the people searching for the content. Understand their thoughts, their feelings, and their emotions.

The best way to come up with the best solution to solve the searcher’s problem is by deeply understanding search intent. And also decode it to know what to write about, and choose the best title for the post. Then format and structure your blog content strategy.

For example, If you go to Google and type “how to lose weight”.

You will see that most of the articles that are ranked have the target keyword “how to lose weight” in the title. When you are writing a blog post title they are more things to consider. And that is where search intent comes in because of those actions and trigger words after the main target keyword. Are what get people to click the article.

Figure out the motivation behind the search so that they will actually click on it. So when we look at the search intent on “how to lose weight”.

We have to understand how people actually want to lose weight. Basically, they want to lose it fast, simply, and easily. So these are the things you need to include in the title of the article.

Examples of the titles for how to weight articles can be:

“100 ways to lose weight fast”
“how to lose weight fast without changing diet”
“10 tips on how to lose weight fast”

All these are simple examples of how to lose weight article title. The title must correspond with the content.

4 types of search intent

They are actually four different types of search intent.

1. Navigational search intent

This type of keyword is used for people who already know what they are searching for. So if someone goes to Google and types Amazon without including the domain extension. They will navigate directly to the Amazon website from the search result.

People often use keywords that have navigational search intent when they are too lazy to type the website URL in their browser. Let’s say you want to login into your Facebook account. Instead of typing facebook.com inside your browser. You will just type Facebook login. And you can visit the login page directly from Google.

2. Informational search intent

This type of search intent is essential for people who are at the start of their customer journey. Let’s use iPhone as an example.

Someone who wants to buy iPhone for the first time will be looking for information that will help he/she choose the right iPhone based on the camera.

People in this category will search for something like “best iPhone camera”. This is an informational intent keyword. And any person targeting this keyword needs to have a blog post about iPhone storage.

This type of blog post will give the users the information they are looking for. When they are at the start of their journey.

3. Commercial intent keyword

So when the users have gotten the information they want about the storage of an iPhone. Now the next chapter is to consider the iPhone to buy. They already know they are a lot of new iPhones on the market. But they don’t know which version is right for them.

So the commercial intent keyword they might type in the search engines will be something like “iPhone 12 mini vs iPhone 12 pro”.

At this point, they have gotten a lot of information on their customer journey. They know which iPhone has the highest storage, and they have also compared different versions of the iPhone 12. Now they know which one is right for them.

4. Transactional search intent

At this stage of their customer’s journey, they are at the bottom of most companies funnel. So they are going to use the transactional intent keywords.

In this case, the keyword they might search for will be “buy iPhone 12 pro”. So someone who is searching for this keyword already has in mind to buy the product. They are already with a credit card and willing to buy.

It’s not always about looking for lucrative keywords. But you need to conduct a search intent analysis to understand where in the funnel the buyers might be.

It is also important to optimize. And create pages for people who are at all stages of their customer journey. A common mistake most businesses make is they try to spend all their resources going after transactional keywords.

Going after only transactional intent-based keywords. Will result in losing potential customers because you have not built trust with them.

The only way to build trust with them is to create content for every funnel stage. You need to nurture your lead so they can trust you.

Make sure to create informational intent and commercial intent-based keywords on your website.

User search intent

User search intent basically means determining what keywords you are going to use for your website. What do you want to rank for and what content you are going to create on your website? So you have to always think about your users’ intent.

Understand what your users are looking for. Know the problem they are trying to solve. User search intent is more important than just thinking about target keywords.

For example, if you are writing an article about CRM software, you need to actually understand what the searcher is looking for. Such as price, implementation, and so on.

The overall goal is to understand what your users might be searching for when they visit Google. Then focus your website to solve the user’s need.

Keyword search intent

The phrase people use in their search queries. Help us understand how to format and optimize our content to match their search intent.

Combining the target keyword with certain words that match the user search intent will help boost our content ranking in search results.

When we say certain words it simply means that articles for commercial search intent will have these words like:

• Reviews
• Compared
• Versus

While contents about informational search intent will have these words:

• How to
• Best way to
• Why
• What is a
• Definition of
• Meaning of

Then some of these words are found in the transactional search intent article:

• Deal
• Discount
• Buy
• Product name

Search intent optimization

Search intent optimization is the best way to optimize the pages on your website to fit the search intent of the users.

If someone is searching for information don’t go straight and start selling something to your new audiences. Because this may cause them to quickly leave your site. Which may result in increasing your website bounce rate.

Focusing more on satisfying the search intent of the users should be your main objective. For example, if the user searches for “how to swim”. The person is looking for information accurately written for learning how to swim.

So the information you are publishing on your blog should only teach them how to swim. And not about swimming gadgets.

At this stage of their swimming journey, they want to know the basic steps of swimming. They may buy swimming gadgets later. But they want to first learn how to swim.

Search intent tool

One of the best tools that can help you find the questions users are searching for is AnswerThePublic.

Answer The Public

Answer the public is a free search intent tool that enables you to find the questions people search for. Based on your target keyword.

Make sure to optimize the pages, products, and posts on your website for the relevant keywords questions, and queries. People are searching to get information.

Search intent is a very important part of SEO. So if you don’t want your website visitors to bounce out immediately they visit. Because your information is not offering what they are looking for. Search intent optimization will help you answer all the questions related to your target keyword.