Many people talk about SEO and the secrets of marketing, and then proceed to talk only about the surface information. If you want to be an expert, and if you want to know the actual things that make a difference, you need to learn about user intent. This article will explain to you all of the concepts revolving around user intent, so that we can get to the core of the topic. It’s essential that we understand the importance of the user’s intent when trying to build an SEO strategy. Let’s see what demographics and psychographics are, and how they can help us.
Contents:
What Is User Intent?
User intent is the intention that the user has, especially when using search engines and browsing websites. Most of the time, when the user is Googling something, they are looking for something specific. Understanding what that thing the user is searching for is, helps you curate your content and create a strategy that gives them exactly what they want. You always need to ask the questions ‘What is this user looking for?’ and ‘Why is the user here?’. Learning the four search intent types will bring some more clarity on how users are searching for things.
Search Intent
There are four main types of search intent that you must know when creating an SEO strategy. You should know that all of the latest Google updates focus on prioritizing relevance when it comes to search results. Which means that when a search is made, Google will try to answer only with the most relevant results. Therefore, if you want to rank high, you want to be relevant. While keywords will help you to generally rank higher, you need to address the different search intents in your content.
- Informational – This is when the user is looking for information. The intent behind most searches is informational, so you really want to target it. Searches like ‘What is user intent?’ qualify as informational searches.
- Navigational – The user is looking for a certain online destination. When you are searching for things like ‘YouTube’ or ‘Nike homepage’.
- Commercial – A commercial search is a search where the user is looking at products, but is not sure if they want to buy. They are doing their research.
- Transactional – The user is finally ready to buy! This intent is found in the searches that use words like: buy, rent, sign up or download. Your product or service is ready to be used, so ensure that you will pop up.
Keywords without Search Intent
Keywords are one of the most powerful tools when it comes to SEO. But they do not work very well alone. They need a foundation, and that foundation can be search intent. We’ll look at an example, so that we can better comprehend how these two work together, and why they need each other. Let’s imagine that you have a business that sells fresh oranges. Therefore, you focus on implementing the keyword ‘orange’ in all of your content. But this is where the problem comes in. Let’s look at how this keyword could be used in different search intents, with different meanings.
- Informational – ‘How much does the internet cost with Orange?’
- Navigational – ‘Orange website’
- Commercial – ‘Orange versus Telekom’
- Transactional – ‘Buy Orange internet’
While we all know the fruit orange, a telecom and internet company chose the fruit as the name for their brand. The same applies to the keywords Apple, Mango and BlackBerry. That’s why you want to keep search intents in mind, and build content for each one of the four types. This is also one of the reasons why you would want to use long-tail keywords. Intent matters a lot, because the demographics won’t matter if you cannot target the intent.
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Long-tail Keywords
Long-tail keywords are keywords that are made up of 3 or more words. They allow you to be more specific, and therefore better target the intent. They have a lower search volume, but a higher conversion rate. Normal, or short-tail keywords, have a larger search volume, but a lower conversion rate. With long-tail keywords you get to your target audience, not just to the general audience. An example of a long-tail keyword would be ‘best orange juice recipe’. Try to use this kind of keyword in all of your content.
The User Intent Map
You need to be aware of the journey that the user takes, and to be present in every step of it. The marketing funnel has four stages: Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action. As you can see, it perfectly fits with the four types of search intent. Ideally, you want to keep as many people as possible from one stage to another. The number of people passing to the next stage will naturally drop. But, doing the best you can ensures that the number is low. You need to help the user find your brand and easily browse your website. With the help of the content that you put out, the user will understand that it’s worth buying from you.
Audience Research
For those that don’t know, audience research is one of the core practices when it comes to SEO. If you want a successful business, you need to know who you are addressing. Why is that important? Well, because different people react differently to things. If your target audience is teenage girls, and your content only reaches old men, you are not going to get the results you want. That’s why you need to know who you are talking to, how they usually receive information, and what you need to tell them to catch their attention.
Demographics and Psychographics
Demographics is the data that tells you who the audience is. Some of the most common demographic details that you want to write down when doing audience research are: age, gender, location, occupation, income and education. The psychographics is the data that tells you why the audience is behaving the way that they do. This is where you want to find out information about the lifestyle, interests and values of your audience. As you can probably tell, this is essential information. If you are paying an SEO services company, tell will help you gather all of this information about your audience.
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Identifying the User’s Intent
If you want to build a strategy that focuses on the intent of the user, you need to know how to identify it. The magic wand is probably the most obvious one, words! The words that are used in the searches tell you everything you need to know about the intention behind them. Moreover, there are a few SERP features that give you some clues. As an example, the ‘Featured snippets’, which is the highlighted excerpts of text that appear on top of the results page. This feature points towards an informational intent. The shopping ads are clearly pointing to the transactional intent. And, last but not least, the ‘Explore Brands’ feature clues to a navigational intent. Now, back to the words. Let’s see common words used for each intent:
- Informational intent – What, why, how, guide, definition of, tips.
- Commercial intent – Best, top, compare, coupon, review.
- Transactional intent – Buy, purchase, sign in, download, price, order, for sale, best price.
Moreover, based on the feedback that you receive from clients, you can tell what users want. It’s also not a bad idea to ask them directly! You can post a video or photo on social media, and ask a question in the description. People love commenting on social media, so you will receive some answers!
How to Implement it?
Being aware of the user’s intent is useless if you are not using the knowledge to help the user find and buy from you. The first thing that you want to do is to create content that answers the intents. If you want to answer the informational intents, you can publish blog posts and guides. Write content that answers the most commonly asked questions. Try to be as creative as possible. Think of different topics related to your business, and address them in your blog posts. To use the previous example, let’s imagine that you have a business that sells fresh oranges. Take a look at a few of the ideas that you can write content on:
- The health benefits of oranges
- Recipe for the best orange juice
- Facts that you didn’t know about oranges
- How to tell if an orange is ripe?
- The best orange dessert recipes
If you want to appeal to the commercial intent, you need comparisons. Write about ‘oranges versus lemons’. Post some reviews from previous clients. You could also get into some case studies about oranges. You would be surprised to find out how many people search daily on the internet! Even if a topic might not seem very interesting, someone will search for it. And even if only one person sees that blog post and decides to buy, you win.
For the transactional intent, you want to create landing pages and pricing pages with clear comparisons. You want clear product pages. The prices should be easily spotted, and all of the information about the product should be available only a scroll away. This is where you want to make sure that your website is optimized. Because no matter how much you care about the intent of the user, if your website is complicated to browse, the user will leave. Eliminate all distractions from the page where the purchase is being made. And, as a tip, focus on only one CTA (Call-to-action) on each page.
The Influence of AI
One of the latest SEO trends is AI, and there is no online topic that is not affected by it, and user intent is no different. AI can now give you relevant results even when the search query is vague. Based on previous searches and your demographics, you receive the most relevant results. AI can also help you predict the next move of a user. By tracking the duration of the session, the click paths, and the return visits, an AI can tell you when a user is about to move from information to transactional. AI monitors can even tell you when a client’s intention is inclining towards cancellation.
Something that not many people know you can do, with the help of AI, is to modify the page based on the intent of the user. These are called ‘dynamic landing pages’ and their content changes based on the intent. If you like this kind of modern approach, you might also be interested in AI Chatbots. They are software applications that use AI to have conversations with humans. They can interpret the meaning behind a query, and engage in human-like conversations. These kinds of AI-powered tools help you create a more personalized strategy.
Many businesses use AI to even create content. From text, to photos and videos, AI can do it all. And while this approach might be better than not having any content at all, it’s not recommended by specialists. Most people can tell when a text has been written using AI, and photos and videos are even more obvious. AI is a great tool if you want some automation on your websites, but not for content. The highest-quality content is written by human experts! You want blog posts that users can relate to. And content writing services can help exactly with that.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
One of the main mistakes that many businesses make is to treat all traffic the same. Make sure that your CTAs are always on the correct page. You don’t want to push someone who’s here to read to buy an expensive product. It’s better to guide the user towards a related article, so that they can further their research. This will lead to them trusting your brand, and going towards buying on their own. And, if someone came to buy, make that easy for them. Don’t include never-ending blocks of text on a product page. The user wants to know the essential information, and then clicks ‘Add to cart’.
The middle of the funnel is often ignored. Those comparison posts we talked about are actually important! Reviews are also essential, because people care about the opinions of others. Before they buy anything, they check the reviews. If there are no reviews showcased on your website, you start looking suspicious. People will start assuming that you don’t showcase reviews because you don’t have any, or because you have bad ones. Encourage all clients to leave a review, in a message to you, or even on Google reviews. This is one of the other mistakes businesses don’t make. After the sale is made, they forget about the client. Contact them and ask them about their experience, because this is how you build loyalty between the business and clients.
Overloading the pages, whether with content or intents, is not a good idea. As previously mentioned, you want to have clear pages, built for a certain intent. You cannot encourage users to read another blog post and buy at the same time. Keep it focused, because that’s what keeps it simple. You also don’t want a lot of photos or distractions from your text. If the page is dedicated to a blog post, allow the user to read it without being distracted by things popping up on the sides. You don’t want a one-time visitor or buyer, you want people who love your brand. Thankfully, GAMIT SEO can help with that! We offer SEO services of the highest quality, and can help you build a successful business with the help of SEO.
About Author
Mihai C. Tudorache
I am the president and co-founder of GAMIT. My business administration background is important in understanding our client’s necessities, so my expertise includes building comprehensive and all-inclusive SEO strategies for lead results. Our advanced SEO solutions are developed through extensive analysis and complete SEO improvement audits.
