Understanding the searcher’s intent is fundamental to SEO and search engine marketing in general. It is that secret ingredient that can make or break your marketing campaign.
Many people new to SEO assume that ranking your web pages for a certain keyword is all you need to succeed. But search intent plays an important, big role.
In this article, we educate you on how to discover the searcher’s intent in SERP.
What is Searcher Intent?
Searcher intent is the intention that a searcher shows when he or she is performing the search. This goes much beyond the keywords and into the psychological needs of the users.
Most of the time, people are actually searching for answers to their questions. And that’s what search engine is for.
For example, take the keyword “Pizza Hut.” You know that it’s a famous pizza chain. So, Google will serve the list of Pizza Hut stores located near the searcher.
If you modify the keywords and search for “Pizza Hut recipes,” then Google will link to web pages that describe how to make Pizza Hut style pizzas.
You can clearly notice the difference. In the first search, the intent was different than the second search. That influenced the Search Engine Results Page or SERP.
Types of Searcher Intent
The search intent can be divided into multiple categories. This categorization is important for you to understand to analyze intent on SERP.
The different types of search intent are:
- Informational
- Commercial
- Navigational
- Transactional
Information Search
Informational searches are those types of searches where the user is looking for more information on a given topic.
For example, if the search is “Who is the founder of Apple,” this is marked as an informational search. The user is clearly looking for an answer to who founded the company Apple.
Similarly, queries like how to boil an egg, what’s the capital of the UK, 25th president of the US are all informational searches.
As per studies, 80% of searches are informational searches.
Commercial Search
The next type of search is commercial search. In these queries, the searcher expresses commercial or buyer’s interest. He or she is in the process of buying something but isn’t ready yet.
A query like “Pizza hut vs. Dominos” is a type of commercial search. Here the searcher wants to know which pizza chain offers the best pizzas.
Likewise, queries like “Audi R8”, “WordPress alternatives for my blog” are commercial searches.
Navigational Search
In navigational search, the user wants to visit a particular website or web page. In other words, they are looking to navigate to a specific website.
So, if you see queries like “Dominos menu,” “Facebook login,” “Amazon headphones” are navigational search. In the first query, the user wants to visit the Dominos menu page.
Transactional Search
The final type of search is transactional. Here, the user is clearly showing his or her intent to purchase something.
A query like ‘order Pizza Hut pizzas online” will qualify for a transactional search. Here the searcher wants to order pizza.
Importance of Search Intent for SEO
So why is search intent important for SEO? That’s because if you target a search with commercial intent and serve them up informational content, not only will your become irrelevant, but you will also lose a potential sale.
The user was clearly looking to buy something. Thus, you should have sent them to a shopping page instead of a blog post.
Conversely, if the search is informational, ranking product pages at the top will be less effective than ranking your blog post.
Your bounce rates will be higher, which will negatively affect your SEO score.
Another reason to understand search intent is to maximize your ROI. As you might know, SEO takes time and effort to achieve. By ranking for irrelevant queries, you’ll lose all the money you’ve put into ranking for that keyword.
Likewise, all your efforts will go in vain.
Therefore, before working on certain keywords, you must understand the search intent behind them.
Analyzing Search Intent on SERP
So how do you go about analyzing the search intent behind a query? The best way to analyze it is to analyze the SERP instead.
Visit Google homepage and perform a search. Now you’ll be served with the search results that Google thinks are relevant to the users. Google also takes into account the intent of the search.
Do you see a lot of “How to” articles or Guides? Then chances are the search has an informational intent. Do you see a lot of paid ads? Then it’s a clear indicator that the search has a commercial or transactional intent.
You should also use common sense when deciding the search intent. By looking at the search query and correlating them with the search results, you’ll find the intent behind the search.
To Sum up
Searching manually can tedious. Therefore, you can use tools like SERP API from Whatsmyserp to automatically collect SERP data on specific searches.
This will drastically cut down the time required to study the search intent. With that said, search intent is also applicable to AdWords campaigns besides SEO.
