Search Intent. What is it and why is it key for SEO?

I had to do it. I had to talk about search intent in SEO.

The search intent and semantic interpretation are things I use in my daily work when writing texts for my clients.

Recently, there has been a lot of talk about all this, with this article by Juan González being the best I have read/listened to so far.

However, this past weekend I was fortunate to hear the presentation by the great Iñaki Huerta on semantic interpretation in SEO at the Web Congress of Zaragoza and, my friend, it couldn't have been more interesting.

What does Google understand and how to give it what it seeks?

That is the key.

I will try to briefly explain to you what search intent is and why it should become one of your main concerns when writing and publishing the content of your website.

I will also share some key points that Iñaki emphasized in his presentation. Not to be missed!

Are you coming to talk about semantic SEO? Let's go:

What is search intent

The term practically defines itself:

It is the goal with which the user performs their query on Google.

That goal can be to obtain information, make a purchase, or get a quick answer.

I could try to make a more extensive definition to make it sound nicer, but that would be silly.

Search intent is what it is and it is what defines the list of results that Google will show the user. Hence the importance of taking it into account.

You will see it more clearly when I tell you about the main types of searches and some examples. Keep reading.

Types of searches according to user intent

Informational

Do you remember the 6 journalistic questions: what, how, when, who, where, and why? They usually form part of this type of search where the user requires a specific answer or information.

For example: president Spain 2018

Oops, it's the search that chooses the president and it's the president who chooses the snippet of the president.

Well, jokes aside, this snippet is no longer updated, right? (Bye, bye Mr. Rajoy). But if you look closely, the latest highlighted news related to the topic appears below.

Another example: barbell squats.

Here, many videos are shown, and it's easy to guess why. The user is probably looking for how to do barbell squats, and Google considers that watching a video is the best way to respond to that informational need. That would be the explanation.

Navigational

The user wants to reach a specific site and can use search + brand for that.

For example: Rafael Nadal wikipedia

Transactional

These are the preferred searches for ecommerce owners and online stores. The user is going to make a purchase and is in that phase of the funnel where conversion is almost guaranteed.

For example: apple iphone 7 bluetooth headphones

Moreover, there are other types of searches that I would place in a middle ground between informational searches and transactional searches. These would be those where the user is not yet in the buying phase but is looking for information about the type of product they are going to buy.

For example: best Android smartphones 2017

NOTE: If you take a look at Juan González's post on search intent, you will see how his classification is much broader and addresses other important factors, such as the type of device from which the search is made. This classification is basic, the one that helps you start understanding how Google's ranking works today, so I recommend reading his post as an advanced complement to this one.

YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN READING:

• How to do SEO for ecommerce
• 5 Types of links that help SEO
• How to write content to rank

So, how to do SEO in this scenario?

Okay, now we know what types of searches a user can perform. And now, how does this help us when doing our keyword research, selecting the keywords we want to rank for, and writing the associated content?

Well, I will explain it with another example, which is easier to understand:

Let's say you find a wonderful keyword like "flights Madrid London", with 12,100 monthly searches.

Okay, let's take a look at the SERPs. What do we find first?

After the extensive list of ads at the top, we find the Google flight search, a type of snippet where the user can already enter the flight dates and directly view the prices and estimated times of each flight. Without even visiting any website!

Awesome.

If we keep scrolling, we find the companies that appeared in the ads at the top: Edreams, Skyscanner, Rumbo, Logitravel, Kayak, Atrápalo…

What do they have in common?

That on all those pages the user can purchase their plane ticket. They can BUY their flight.

What has happened with this search?

Basically, it is a transactional search where the user is already looking for a very specific product: a flight from Madrid to London.

Do you think that because you write a 2,000-word post you will manage to rank ahead of all these flight purchase pages?

Obviously not, because you are not addressing the user's search intent.

Iñaki provided some very accurate examples in his presentation at the Web Congress Zaragoza. This was one of them:

For the search "SEO," Google can understand that you want to know what SEO is, and that’s why it offers definition snippets at the top of the results page, but it can also think that you are looking for companies that offer SEO services, which is why it also shows you a map with local results of companies that offer web positioning. The following results would then relate to articles teaching you how to do SEO.

Initially, Google only used simple keywords to organize its ranking, but now everything has changed. Its algorithm has learned to interpret what we call latent semantics, and now synonyms, related terms, and families come into play, among other things.

This is how Google works today, and the sooner we accept it, the better we will learn to do our semantic keyword research and select the right keywords for our online business.

At this point, it should be clear that Rankbrain not only takes into account the searched keyword and the associated search intent but also previous experience, location, device, trends... That is, user intent is just a small part of all this machine learning technology behind the Giant.

CAUTION. You cannot address all search intents on the same page.

For example, if you have an ecommerce page where you sell the bluetooth headphones we mentioned earlier, be clear that the search intent you are going to cover is transactional.

No matter how much content you add at the end of the page, you will not reach Top 1 for the rest of the search intents.

Conclusion

Google is not foolish, even if some still think so. And no, we are NOT smarter than the algorithm, as Iñaki stated in Zaragoza.

You can even reach the top results by doing "the wrong thing" and not complying with all the above in certain topics, but keep in mind that the position you achieve will not be lasting because factors like CTR or bounce rate will tell Google that you are not meeting the user's search need.

Why waste time?

Isn't it better to learn to do it right?

So, how about starting to pay more attention to what the user wants and reviewing your content to adjust it to keywords and semantic terms that better fit what your page offers?

Now, with all this information processed and understanding a bit better the importance of search intent for the new SEO, all that’s left is to learn how to do good semantic keyword research. We will explain it soon. Stay tuned!