What is Search Intent and How Can We Optimize For It?

It's easy to get deep in the weeds, analyzing which keywords to optimize toward based on search volume and competition. However, it's important to take a step back and consider what your target audience wants and how they search for it.

Optimizing for user intent (also called search intent) simply means centering your digital marketing efforts around the true intentions of each search. Failing to assess your target audience's search queries and the results search engines prioritize can lead to missing the mark.

By harnessing user intent, you can attract the right audiences more likely to convert.

What is Search Intent?

Search intent means the purpose of each search. For example, if someone searched “what is a financial plan”, it would be an informational keyword because they are just searching for information about a topic and are very high in the marketing funnel. But, if a user searched for “best financial advisor”, this would be a commercial keyword, since the user wants to do research before making a purchase.

Google aims to provide the most helpful information in search engine results pages for people when they search. Part of creating helpful content is making sure you are optimizing it for user intent. If a user is wondering what a financial plan is, they most likely aren’t ready to see a webpage with a contact form to sign up for a financial advisor (and Google probably wouldn’t serve it to them in the first place).

Understanding the Four Types of Search Intent

User intent is typically categorized into four buckets:

1. Informational: The user wants to learn more about a topic

2. Navigational: The user is looking for a specific website or webpage

3. Commercial: The user is doing research before making a purchase

4. Transactional: The user is considering making a purchase

Informational and navigational searches are classified as low intent, meaning searchers usually aren’t close to converting and therefore aren’t seen as qualified prospects. However, commercial and transactional searches can indicate the user is lower in the marketing funnel and closer to making a purchase.

Informational Search Intent

People use search engines frequently to find information. When someone is looking for information, they tend to search questions, but informational searches can also be posed as statements. Here are a few examples of informational searches:

• “How deep is the ocean?”

• “Why does my stomach hurt?”

• “Banana bread recipe”

Navigational Search Intent

People use navigational searches when they’re looking for a particular website. They’ll typically include the brand name in their query as well as a product, service, or something specific to that website. Below are several examples of navigational searches:

• “Instagram user login”

• “Workshop Digital SEO”

• “Nike"

Commercial Search Intent

If people search using keywords that show they are doing research before a purchase, that would be a commercial keyword. Although they are still looking for information rather than converting, the information would still tie together with a resulting action. Here are some examples of commercial searches:

• “Best primary care doctor in Richmond”
• “Android vs iPhone”
• “Costco reviews”

Transactional Search Intent

Transactional searches happen when a user is considering making a purchase. When a person is ready to buy, they’ll usually search for the specific product or service and sometimes include the brand name. Here are different types of transactional searches:

• “Nordstrom dresses prices”

• “Cheap Macbook Pro”

• “Buy all-weather outdoor furniture”

Let Google Give You the Answers

When analyzing search intent, the best tip to remember is to let Google do the work for you. On average, Google handles billions of searches every day, and its massive database has a plethora of information stored to serve up individual queries.

Keep in mind: the main goal of search engines is to serve up the most relevant information for each specific query.

This is why Google’s algorithm undergoes constant updates. These updates improve the process of retrieving the best and most relevant answers for users. Essentially, Google and other search engines are working the hardest to understand search intent, which means we have the same goal as search engines!

How to Identify User Intent

As you produce new content, it is important to understand how users search and what their intent is. Here are some ways to analyze search intent:

Manually Analyze SERPs

Take your list of keywords and search them manually. What is coming up in search results pages? Does Google retrieve resources that are relevant to your website? You may have “custom dog collars” on your list but adjust it depending on what comes up when that phrase is searched. You want to ensure that your target keywords populate content specific to your industry and target audience.

Check Featured Snippets

Search engines will display featured snippets depending on the query and whether it is informational, navigational, or transactional. For example, high-intent keywords similar to “buy” and “shop” are more likely to generate product carousels, while low-intent keywords (informational and navigational searches) are more likely to bring up featured snippets:

Featured snippets currently appearing for your target keywords should influence the way you write content and optimize your website in general.

Identify Gaps in Content

An effective method to attract the right traffic is to provide answers where content “gaps” exist, meaning there are opportunities to provide more content where information is lacking. Search some of your target keywords again to see if enough information is available for each keyword, and if not, write content for that query.

Find Related Keywords in “People also ask”

Within search results pages, you’ll sometimes see a box called “People also ask.” This box contains queries similar to the keyword you searched. Always be sure to review this resource because it can provide you with related keywords to include when optimizing your website:

Look at Top-Ranking Pages

Since Google serves the most relevant results, we can study the top-ranking pages to determine what makes them valuable to search engines for these specific queries. Although we don’t want to write an identical piece of content compared to competitors, it can still be effective to study what is already performing well when trying to optimize for user intent.

Identify the Type of Content

First, determine if the content is text or video. If the content is text, identify whether the text is a blog post, landing page, product page, or something different. This helps you understand the content style search engines prioritize and what users expect.

See How the Content is Formatted

When analyzing top-ranking pages, you’ll also want to check how the content is formatted. For example, is the content a recipe, step-by-step guide, review, opinion piece, or something else? Let’s look at search engine results for “summer gardening tips”:

This article is showing up as a featured snippet and it’s a step-by-step guide. If you’re optimizing content related to gardening, it’s important to see how other gardening websites format their pages.

Check for Structured Data

Structured data provides search engines with additional context for the purpose of a page. It also can qualify content to show up in SERPs as rich snippets.

This free structured data testing tool allows you to pinpoint structured data implemented on any website. While visiting the top-ranking pages, be sure to check this tool to see if any structured data has been utilized. Whether it’s Organization, Local, FAQ, or another type of schema markup, you should let the structured data on the top-ranking pages guide your approach.

Time-Saving Tools for User Intent Analysis

While manually reviewing SERPs, checking featured snippets, identifying content gaps, and looking at how content is formatted are all helpful, tools exist that can make these processes more efficient.

Below are a few handy tools you can pay to use—many of which are free!

Ahrefs

• Offers a free plan

• Explore target keywords and find similar terms that people are searching for

• Discover search features appearing for specific keywords

• Conduct a SERP analysis

• Find gaps in content

• Check backlinks and more!

Target the Right Traffic with a Digital Marketing Team

Optimizing for search intent isn’t always intuitive and doesn’t happen overnight. People aren’t easy to understand, so sometimes we have to navigate confusing queries to find what people truly want when they search.

Many of these strategies also take time to complete and can be ongoing tasks. If you’re interested in talking to digital marketing experts on how to optimize for your specific target audience, reach out to our team today.

This blog post was originally published on August 27, 2020, and was updated and republished on August 28, 2024.