WHAT IS A SEARCH INTENT IN SEO?

You want to develop qualified traffic on your website in order to generate leads? Don’t focus only on keywords but rather respond to the search intentions of Internet users!
When you work on your SEO, you can sometimes find yourself in a very frustrating situation.

Have you ever spent hours creating and writing the perfect content, only to find that it doesn’t rank at all on the expected keywords?

We have.

But why?

The most likely answer is that the keywords you have chosen do not match the search intent of the user.

What is search intent in SEO?
Search intent can be defined as the main objective of a user who has typed a query on Google.

Let’s take an example:

If I type “best electric bikes Rouen”, my search intention is different from the query “convert electric bike Rouen” or “electric bike subscription Rouen”.

I don’t have the same objective on these 3 requests and the pages that will be proposed to me by Google will be very different for each one.

However, they are all on the same theme (the electric bike) and even have the keyword “electric bike Rouen” in common.

In this example, the intention of the first query is a need to select and compare different models before buying. In the second one, we want to know how to transform a standard bike into an electric bike. And for the last one, we’re more interested in renting.

If you write content focusing only on your keywords without taking into account the search intent you want to answer, you will negatively impact your SEO.

Let’s see why in this second part!

Why is search intent so important in SEO?
Because you are going Google’s way
Let’s think about it. What is Google’s goal?

If you’re a marketer like me, you’ll tell me that it’s to make our lives more complicated by making us all play a game without giving us the rules that go with it.

But for the average person, Google is above all a tool that allows you to get a reliable answer with a minimum of effort.

And if Google is where it is today, it’s because it has always focused on this objective: to offer the best answer to any query.

As the algorithm has evolved, it has become more and more efficient.

In the early days of SEO, it was enough to simply stuff a page with a ton of keywords to get to the top positions.

All that has changed, and Google is still analyzing more finely websites and pages to decide their positioning on a query.

To improve its positioning in search engines
If a user launches a search but doesn’t click on any of the results, and then launches a new search, then Google understands that the search intent is not satisfied and this is a failure for it.

As Google does not like to make mistakes, it will tend to stop proposing results that do not generate clicks if a certain number of users reproduce the behavior on similar queries.

In the same way, it will be able to judge the relevance of your page to a query if your page generates clicks on the results pages. This is called the CTR or click-through rate. The higher it is, the better the signals will be.

But that’s not all! Once on your page, the behavior of the user will also have an impact. If the person leaves the page without taking any action (called a bounce) and then looks at another result, then Google will also consider that the search intent has not been fulfilled.

The more time spent and the more pages viewed during a visit, the more favorable the signals are.

It is therefore important not to try at all costs to position yourself on all possible queries for a given keyword, but to target a specific search intention.

In this way, you will greatly reduce the risks that a page sends too many bad signals to Google and that this contributes to degrade its ability to be displayed in good position in the results.

And if your page sends good signals, these are additional opportunities to gain and keep better positions!

The 4 categories of search intent
We usually say that there are 4 types of search intent depending on the queries. But in reality, the same intention can fit into several categories at the same time.

#1 – The informational query
This is the most common type of query. Here the user is looking for information, as the name suggests.

These are mainly queries in the form of basic questions or very broad keywords. For example, there are searches on people, addresses, concepts, etc.

If we place ourselves in the online purchase path, we will be dealing with a prospect in the Awareness or Consideration phases.

Examples of informational queries:
Jean-Paul Belmondo
Release date of the Star Wars Kenobi series
Vaccine operation arn messenger
Address Prefecture Le Havre
…
#2 – The commercial / preferential request
This time, the user is in a commercial process and will try to get information before a potential purchase.

Among these requests, we will have for example requests for comparisons between competing offers, opinions on a product or service or research on the company or the brand.

We can also add all localized searches, even when they do not include brand names or products, such as for example: “utility vehicle rental Bordeaux”.

Here, the querier will be in the Consideration or Decision phase.

Examples of commercial / preferential queries:
Netflix series catalog Disney Plus Amazon Prime
Best sushi in Paris
Avis Macbook Air 2021
Utility vehicle rental Bordeaux
…
#3 – The transactional request
Here we are clearly in the Decision phase.

In this type of query, the person now knows what he or she is looking for and the intention is to find where to make the purchase.

The queries are very precise and generally include the name of a brand or a company. They also include searches for discount offers, or promotions.

Examples of commercial / preferential queries:
Nike Air Force 1 Low Space Jam Sneakers size 44
Best flight prices Paris Tokyo
Coiffeur Lyon Part Dieu
Spotify promo code
…
#4 – The navigational query
This last type of query is totally different from the 3 previous ones.

They are made when the user knows exactly what page he is looking for and it is easier to perform a quick search on Google than to type the direct url or to navigate from page to page on a website.

They are generally not very useful in the purchasing process.

Examples of commercial / preferential queries:
Connection impots
Article SEO SLN The Agency
Order Leclerc Drive
…

Study the search results pages
Now you are allowed to hit the Enter key!

Just like suggestions, when you do a keyword search, you will get the best results (according to Google).

By looking at the pages, articles, or even images and videos that will appear in the search results pages (called SERP in SEO), you will get crucial information.

Remember that if these contents exist and appear on the first page, it is because they are of interest to Google. If we follow what I said above, it is that by extension they respond to search intentions.

It’s up to you! Study the results and deduce the search intents they answer.

You can also directly enter queries for which you already know the main search intent. You may find opportunities to create content on even more specific intents in the results.

Analyze your content performance in Google Search Console
If you are not yet using Google Search Console, do it now!

Like Google Analytics, it’s a tool made available for free by the search engine. It allows you to get a lot of crucial information about the performance of your website on Google.

Among all these features, the one that interests us here is the possibility to know following which requests the visitors arrive on each of your pages.

This information has two major interests on the subject that interests us:

First of all, you will know if your page is well positioned on the queries that you target. You will certainly have surprises at this level.

Secondly, you will be able to identify search intentions that you had not necessarily thought of.

If your page generates a lot of traffic on a certain intention, continue to optimize it in that direction.

On the other hand, it may generate little traffic but high volumes of impressions on other queries. In this case, it is in your interest to create new content based on these intentions.

If there is only one thing you should remember from this article, it is that you should always identify and understand the search intent before optimizing a content. All that’s left is to use the right techniques to write for the web and make sure you offer quality content to perform well on Google!

To go further, check out our complete guide on SEO!