The whole point of SEO is to get more visitors to your site whether your goal is to sell stuff or attract regular readers or subscribers. The most common tactic used by digital marketers like myself is optimizing the client’s site content for common words that people use i.e. keyword optimization.
However, SEO is an ever-changing field and search engines are continuously evolving to find better ways to deliver relevant results quickly. My digital marketing case studies have shown me that even though keyword research and optimization is an excellent way of driving traffic, search intent-based keyword research is better and more useful especially if dealing with e-commerce site architecture.
What is search intent?
Search, searcher or user intent is simply the reason or motive a person has for conducting a specific search on a search engine. It’s the “why” behind the search. Do they want to learn something? Are they looking for answers to questions they have or are they looking to purchase something?
Different types of searcher intent
Before knowing how to optimize for searcher intent, you first need to understand the different types of intent. These include:
- Informational. Defines a user looking for information e.g. looking for information and quick answers on health products, recent news, directions, health information, etc.
- Navigational. People with this intent are looking for a predetermined destination such as a specific website, particular brands or services and products that are already known.
- Transactional. Those with this intent browse because they want to make a purchase, be it a product or service.
- Commercial investigation. This type of intent lies between research and transactional intent. The person might be interested in making a future purchase and they’re looking for more information to help them make that purchase.
Optimizing for searcher intent
So how do you make searcher intent work for you?
Optimizing for searcher intent means you have to make sure that the content you’re writing or your website landing page fits both the common keywords people search for as well as your target audience’s search intent.
For instance, if your audience has informational intent, and you’re selling some products, only having a keyword like “Buy…” followed by the name of the product might not bring the desired results. Instead, you could try adding more information about the product, perhaps write a guide on how to use it to fulfill this searcher intent and make higher conversions.
The best way to gain valuable insight into your audience’s intent is to ask them. You can do this by coming up with a short survey containing questions relating to what your site visitors were looking for and have it pop up when people visit your website.
If you’re looking to improve your digital marketing strategy and make more conversions, reach out for a consultation and let’s see how we can work together.