The search intent describes the purpose that the user has when using the search engine and is what Google focuses on when improving its search engine algorithms, as well as when choosing the content that is displayed at the top of the search results page.
Although it is usually narrowed down to 4, there are many more search intents depending on the user’s needs.
In SEO, it is key to understand what the audience needs and. understand what they are looking for at any given moment, depending on where they are in the sales funnel. This is exactly what allows us to know the search intent.
To identify the user’s search intent, we can ask ourselves some questions such as: Why is the user performing this search? Are they looking for a specific website or just an answer to a question? Are they looking for product reviews or do they want to buy now?
Google is able to perfectly identify a user’s search intent and will always display those pages that are best optimized and most closely match the search term entered, as well as the user’s own intent.
Types of search intent.
Search intentions are usually grouped into four major groups: informational, navigational, commercial, and transactional.
-Informational: It is the type of search that is performed when you only want to obtain information on a topic and it is the most common type. The user has a specific doubt and they want to solve it or expand their knowledge on that topic.
-Navigational: This is a more advanced intent, as the user is not looking for general information, but rather their intent is to access a specific web page. For example, when a user searches on Google Facebook to access his account. In this type of search, positioning an incorrect keyword can be detrimental, as it will bring residual traffic that will only increase the bounce rate.
-Commercial: In this search, the user is not yet looking to buy a product immediately, but is conducting a study or analyzing different alternatives for a future purchase.
-Transactional: This is the last part of the sales tunnel. The user already knows what product he wants to buy, is checking prices and is ready to make a transaction.
Other types of search intent.
Although traditionally, it has been reduced to 4 search intentions, the truth is that there are more. For example, it is not the same a user who is looking for the schedule of a movie, than the one who is looking for reviews of it.
They are both looking for information about a movie, but they are in. different points in the sales tunnel. In this case we would be dealing with what we could call search sub-intentions.
At this point, we could define many more search intentions. For example: search for a store near us, search for reviews of a product, read the latest news, search for medical symptoms, buy a particular product, search for images, find nearby activities, search for tutorials, etc.
There are many of these sub-intentions, so it is very important to understand very well the what and why of the user’s search intent and create content that fits as much as possible to what they really need.
Therefore, to improve the optimization of a content, it requires a complete understanding and a nuanced approachthat allows you to nurture users through each step of the sales funnel.
