Search Intent: What it is and how to optimise your content for it

Every time you search for something, you’re looking for an answer.

Whether that’s a way to clean a red wine stain off your brand new sofa or you’re looking for your next pair of running trainers for the marathon you signed up for – you want to find an answer to your question or a solution to your problem.

Search intent refers to exactly this, the reason behind a search or query.

As a searcher you are a search engine’s customer, and, like any business, search engines want their customers to find what they are looking for as quickly and easily as possible – this is where search intent comes in.

Search intent is an important consideration when creating the content for your website. Here, we look at what search intent is and how to optimise your content to match the motivations behind potential customers’ searches.

What Is Search Intent?

Search intent is the reason or motivation behind a search query online. So, in simple terms, search intent is why people search for what they search for online. You may also hear it being referred to as user intent, audience intent or query intent.

Types of Search Intent

Search intent can be divided into four main categories:

• the searcher wants to know something
• the searcher wants to do something
• the searcher is looking for a specific webpage or website
• the searcher is looking for a specific business or category of business.

In the SEO world, they are referred to as informational, commercial, transactional and commercial intent.

We have broken down the four types of search intent below:

Why Is Search Intent Important?

Understanding search intent is crucial for improving your SEO performance. It allows you to understand and align with your customers’ needs and create content that is relevant, clear, and helpful, improving the overall experience for users visiting your site.

Content that aligns with user search intent is more likely to be ranked higher by search engines. Once in the SERPs, content that matches the search intent increases the chances that users will click on your result. Then when they are on your website, you can guide users effectively through the purchase or conversion process, improving sales or goal completions.

In this ever-evolving, competitive world, traffic and visibility are key to helping your online business thrive by attracting the right customers and generating more conversions or revenue. Don’t waste your time writing great content that your customers don’t care about or engage with.

How Do You Determine Search Intent?

So, how do you figure outsearch intent? Below, we have compiled our top tips and tricks for determining search intent and incorporating it into your SEO strategies.

Keyword research

Choosing the right keywords is crucial to implementing the right search intent in your SEO strategy. Get into the minds of your customers and target audience. What are the kinds of things they would search for around your business, services and/or products? Once you have a list of some keywords you think your customers will be using, you can delve a bit deeper.

We recommend looking at keywords from each stage of the sales funnel. If you sell engagement rings then potential customers may fit into all of the search intentions. For example:

The best SEO strategies include keyword research that takes into account all relevant types of search intent.

Reviewing the SERPs

Search for the keywords you think your customers are using. The current search results can help you understand if you’re using the right keywords. If you see competitors appearing and businesses like yours, then you’re on the right track.

Once you’ve found the type of keywords your customers are looking at, see what type of results are appearing for them. What are your competitors doing? What kind of content are they pushing? What are the common themes of the content or pages? What’s the search intent behind each listing?

SERP features can be a great tool to help determine what kind of search intent is behind a keyword. For example, if, when you search for a keyword the google shopping result bar appears the search is likely to be transactional or, if a featured snippet or AI overview comes up, the query is likely to be informational.

Here is our step-by-step process for reviewing the SERPs for search intent:

1. Search for your keyword using your chosen search engine.
2. Look at the top 10 results.
3. Analyse the page titles, content types and content formats.
4. Look at the SERP features (shopping results, AI overview, knowledge panel, image results etc.).
5. Look at the top pages and look at the page structure, type and content.
6. Use this as inspiration for your own content/page.

Utilise tools

If you’re unsure of the search intent behind keywords, handy tools, such as Ahrefs and SEMRush can determine this for you. Input your keywords into your chosen tool and it will label each keyword with the suspected search intent.

What if a Search Has Overlapping Intent?

Sometimes, search intent may not be easy to identify, or there may be multiple intentions behind a search. Getting the right intent is crucial if you want your content to rank.

For example, someone may search for ‘womens running trainers’ where they are looking for information about women’s running trainers (informational intent) but alternatively, they may want to compare different brands and types (commercial intent).

In cases of mixed intent, you can choose which search intent will benefit you best. If you have an ecommerce website, then choosing the commercial intent may align best with your business goals.

How to Optimise Your Content for Search Intent?

So, once we’ve figured out our search intent, how do we actually optimise content to meet it?

Look at your competition

Look at the top-ranking pages for the search query; this highlights the type of content that search engines consider the most valuable and relevant to customers, giving you a great indication on the type of content you should produce.

Use the 3 Cs of search intent

Using the three Cs of search intent helps you figure out how best to optimise your content correctly. The three Cs of search intent are:

• Content type – this refers to the type of content that is ranking for the keywords, for example, blog posts, category pages, product pages or videos.

• Content format – this refers to how the information is presented via the page, for example, whether it is a how-to guide, a list article or a comparison table etc.

• Content angle – this refers to the focus and perspective of the top-ranking content. This helps you determine what searchers are looking for most when they search using the specific query.

Follow SEO content best practices

As with any content, when optimising for search intent it is also important to not forget SEO best practices when optimising content. We’ve listed some of them below:

• Keep content concise – clearly address the main concern or question within the first section of your content. Your content should always provide valuable information about the problem you’re solving or the question you’re answering.
• Write for your customers and not for search engines – as a general rule the best way to write content is directly for your customers. Avoid keyword stuffing and keep content clear, concise and natural. Make sure to use your target keywords in your content, but keep it natural.

Google’s helpful content update, which was first introduced in 2022, means that it now prioritises content that is actually useful over content that has just been created to rank.

• Optimise meta data – write descriptive, enticing meta data that reflects your content and search intent while enticing users to click your website over those of the competition.
• Use headings & subheadings – use clear and relevant headings and subheadings to break up your content and structure it in an easily readable way.
• Add calls-to-action – make sure to naturally include calls-to-action that guide your customers to the next step (making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, filling out a content form etc.).
• Use images and videos – using videos and images helps make content more appealing but also helps users understand your content better. For example, product pages may include how to videos for using the products.

Sometimes it’s not about content

As great as content is for SEO, sometimes it’s not about writing lots of quality content. Sometimes when people search, they may not want lots of “content”; instead, they may simply want to buy something, get a quote or sign up for something.

This is why search intent is so important. Instead of writing a blog post, all you may need is an optimised product page or a landing page ready for people to sign up or get a quote.

Search Intent Summary:

We’ve covered quite a bit in this blog, so we’ve summarised everything we’ve covered below.

• Search intent is the reason behind a search.
• There are four different types of search intent, informational, transactional, commercial and navigational.
• Perform keyword research to determine search phrases that align with your customers’ goals.
• When completing keyword research, make sure to look at all stages of the sales funnel as each may have different search intent.
• Use current top-performing websites for keywords to identify the type of content people want to see appearing for specific queries.
• Optimise your content specifically for the type of search intent.
• If there is mixed intent, choose the intent that will benefit your business goals the most.
• Think about the three Cs when creating content.
• Remember sometimes you won’t need lots of content for your page to rank, you just need to answer the question or deliver the solution to a problem quickly.