How do you build an SEO and content strategy for intent?
Why is it important to consider search intent?
How do you show the right content to the right audience at the right time in the buyer’s journey?
First, you need to know what search intent is.
(Already know the basics? Skip directly to how to improve your keyword plan with your search intent in mind.)
What is search intent?
Search intent is the purpose behind the user’s search.
Your audience uses search for countless reasons.
Some users Google simple questions. Other users are looking for suitable websites to purchase goods.
For each type of search, you can appear on the search engine results page (SERP) at the right time.
The four main types of search intent
Knowing what people are searching for can help you create the right type of content and give you a better chance of achieving your goals.
Since people consider dozens of goals when searching millions of queries, it is easier to classify these searches as search intent.
To understand what people are searching for, you can organize their keywords into four main types:
- information: Search for answers to specific questions or learn about information on a topic.
- navigation: Searching for a specific site, web page, or geographic location.
- commercial: Searches that are investigating or comparing brands, products, or services.
- trade: A search that indicates the intention to complete a purchase or take action on the site.
By understanding these tags, plus other keyword metrics such as search volume, cost-per-click, and difficulty, you and your team will be able to create and deliver better content at the right time.
But what does the search intent actually look like?
How do you identify these qualities in keywords and use this information to perform intent-targeted SEO and content planning?
Spoiler: using intention tools like this can be much easier Semrush!
How to identify the intent of keywords
To understand the intent of keywords, you can look for clues.
Clues can be found:
- On SERP.
- In the keyword phrase itself.
- Use the keyword intent tool.
How to identify intent through SERP clues
Google is very good at identifying intent. It provides SERPs to accommodate what it believes is the intent behind each keyword.
Therefore, you only need to view the content provided by Google on the SERP to help you decode the intent.
If you see:
- Shopping ads, The intention is Transactional.
- Comment, Intent is commercial.
Commercial searches usually also include Google Shopping ads.
Search results screenshot [best laptops for high school students], Google, November 2021- Instant answer, people also ask and knowledge panel, Intent is Informative.
For information search, Google likes to provide information cards and related questions to explore the topic.
Search results screenshot [what is cryptocurrency], Google, November 2021- Site links on top brand results, The intention is navigation.
If the search is a brand name, and the top organic results on the SERP list the brand with a large number of site links, then this is an indicator of navigation intent.
Search results screenshot [best buy], Google, November 2021How to identify intent through keyword clues
The next place where you can manually identify intent is the keyword phrase itself.
If the query contains certain words, you can start to hypothesize possible intent.
Examples of keyword clues for each type of search intent are as follows:
- Transaction: buy, cheap, sell online.
- Business: best, comment, compare.
- Navigation: any brand name.
- Information: how, why, what, tutorial.
How to use Semrush’s keyword intent solution to identify intent
The last and fastest way to identify keyword intent is to use tools designed to analyze SERPs and the language behind the keywords.
Semrush will do this automatically.
Whenever you research keywords in the Semrush suite, you will see an intent tag.
Screenshot from Semrush.com, November 2021In early November, we saw SEO professionals sharing their excitement at the launch of this feature on Twitter.
Screenshot from Twitter.com, November 2021So, once you know how to identify the intent of a keyword, what’s the next step?
Once you have determined the intent of your keywords, you can decide on the type of content you create for your website to best target your keywords.
How to use keyword intent to create content
How can I rank well for information keywords?
Provide informative content to answer questions, provide facts, and provide help.
How to create content for commercial keywords?
Stay away from product pages only. Try to write a comparison article.
If your keyword phrase is [best laptops for high school students], To locate this organic traffic by comparing articles that provide information about the options people should consider using laptops for high school students.
How to create content for trading keywords?
With transaction search, you should make your product page as clean and direct as possible.
Provide information about your product/service so that people can easily decide to buy or take action from the page.
Screenshot from Semrush.com, November 2021Are you ready to make it work together?
How to develop your keyword plan with search intent in mind
Knowing how to structure your content based on search intent will take you to a new level of success. You may start to rank higher on SERPs and find your content on the first page.
Go further. Surpass your competitors by researching and discovering their intentions.
Perhaps your competitor is ranking for a large number of information keywords, and your website is only for navigation and business queries.
If you want to surpass them, you also need to adjust your content strategy to locate information queries.
Tip #1: Add search intent to your competitor research
If you have SEO tools that collect natural keyword data:
- View a list of competitors’ keywords.
- Use the keyword intent clues listed above to cross-reference each individual keyword.
- Manually mark the intent type of each keyword.
- Map each keyword to your high ranking page for each competition.
- analyze data. Is their homepage ranking a navigation query? Do their top blog posts rank in information searches or business searches? In contrast, what is your web page doing?
An easier way:
Semrush New intent indicators Tools can easily drill down into these data.
All you have to do is:
- Enter any domain in the main search to get a domain overview report.
(This will include organic search traffic in the overview and show the complete intent ratio of the site’s ranking in that overview.)
example
Let’s look at three competing home improvement blogs and compare their organic keyword intent ratios.
Remodelaholic.com Information keywords account for a high proportion, while navigation keywords account for a small proportion. The last quarter is a combination of business and transaction keywords:
Screenshot from Semrush.com, November 2021Shanty-2-chic.com Has a similar order of ratios, but has a higher number of transaction keywords compared to commercial keywords:
Screenshot from Semrush.com, November 2021Ana-white.com In terms of intent ratio, its appearance is very similar to shanty-2-chic, but the total number of keywords is higher:
Screenshot from Semrush.com, November 2021What can you do with this information?
