- In a previous video on this channel,
we touched on the topic of search intent
and why it's so important for SEO.
So let's do a deeper dive today.
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Search intent is what Google have determined
that people want to see and want to click on
when they've searched a particular keyword,
now you have to remember that Google have decades of data
about what someone actually clicks on
when they've done a search for a particular keyword.
You also need to remember that Google's whole mission
is to give people the best user experience
and the answers to their queries, as fast as possible.
Determining the search intent for a keyword
when you're doing some research
before you start your SEO campaign
is something that is often overlooked by a lot of people.
They think once keyword research is done,
that they can just go after those keywords,
but you need to actually dive deeper
into those keywords themselves
and what Google think people want to see
when they search that keyword.
The example that we always give is that if you're a dentist
and you want to rank for the term "tooth pain",
that's a logical keyword to want to rank for
if your industry is dentistry.
However, not a single dentist anywhere in the world
ranks on the page one positions for the term tooth pain.
And the reason is because Google have determined
that the search intent is that people
want to see home remedies,
they want to see how to get rid of it quickly.
They want to see how to prevent it in the future.
And pretty much their last resort
is to want to see a dentist.
This is why conducting search intent analysis
is so important because if you found what you believe
is a lucrative keyword from keyword research,
and you try to optimize for it,
you could be in an extremely difficult uphill battle.
Now search intent itself actually goes a lot deeper.
There's actually four different types of search intent,
and we'll look at them today.
The four different types of search intent are navigational,
informational, commercial, and transactional.
So let's start off with navigational intent.
This is specifically used for keywords where somebody knows
what they're looking for immediately.
So if somebody types in the word 'Amazon' into Google,
rather than going to amazon.com or amazon.co.uk directly,
well, they want to navigate to Amazon.
It's fairly obvious in that case.
Now I actually personally do this
for a few different things as well.
I use navigational intent because I'm too lazy
to use those few extra clicks.
So for example, I might search something
such as Twitter login or you know,
something that I can actually find, that's easy to get to
if I search it rather than clicking on a website,
then clicking log in and then clicking this,
then clicking that, if I want to get
an immediate direct access to it,
I will use keywords that have navigational intent.
Now for the rest of the types of intent
that we mentioned earlier, they actually also then correlate
with where people are in your funnel.
So for those who aren't aware just very quickly,
your funnel for your customers or clients,
that's basically where they are on their customer journey.
So you have top of funnel, which is usually lot larger.
They're the people that are at the very start
of their customer journey.
Now these are people who are more so associated
with informational intent sort of keywords.
As you move lower down your funnel,
it gets a bit smaller because some people
aren't going to make it through to the next section
because not everyone is going to become your customer,
but these people then,
they'll use commercial intent keywords.
And then we actually reached the bottom of your funnel,
which has even less people in it.
But there're the people who are much more likely
to actually buy from you.
These people that use transactional intent keywords.
So let's start off looking at
your informational intent keywords.
Now remember, this is more so associated
with your top of funnel customers or clients.
These are essentially people
who are at the start of their customer journey.
So let's use a popular topic as an example,
such as the iPhone.
So someone who's at the start of their customer journey,
who doesn't exactly know what phone
they want to buy just yet,
they might search something such as
"iPhone versus Android storage capacity".
Now this is an informational intent keyword,
and anyone who's actually targeting these keywords,
they'll be clever enough to have a blog post
all about Android versus iPhone storage capacity.
And this gives people the information that they're seeking
when they're at the top of funnel,
the start of their customer journey to actually guide them
further down the funnel and to then start using
other different keywords.
And then we'll actually move on
to your commercial intent keywords.
So now that person has finished their research
on iPhone versus Android storage capacity,
they've come to the conclusion that they think
they'd be happy enough with an iPhone,
but now it comes into what iPhone do they want.
So they know that there's new iPhones out there.
They've heard about them,
but they don't know which version is right for them.
So the commercial intent keyword that they might type
is something such as "iPhone 12 versus iPhone 12 mini".
I'm sure you can start to see as we go through this example,
that someone is getting closer and closer
to what they want, and to actually making a purchase.
So once that person has finished their research
at this stage of their customer journey,
now they've already compared their iPhone 12
to the iPhone 12 mini,
and they know which one is right for them.
So they'll move on to the next stage of their journey,
they're now at the bottom of the funnel for most companies.
And this is when they start
to use transactional intent keywords.
Now transactional intent keyword in this case
might be something such as "buy iPhone 12 mini".
Think about that keyword for a second.
If someone goes online and they type "buy iPhone 12 mini",
they're in a buying mindset,
they are ready to hand over their credit card details
to a company such as yours on the website,
and they're actually ready to buy from you.
Now, those three letters alone
change what the search intent and the results will be
because all we've put in here is "buy iPhone 12 mini".
Imagine if those three little letters
weren't at the start there, we took out the word 'buy',
and someone just searches "iPhone 12 mini".
Usually in that case,
Google is already smart enough to know,
people want a bit more information,
they're not ready to go to the checkout stage yet.
So by just having what we call a modifier keyword,
which in this case is 'buy',
well, the intent and what the search results will be
will be very, very different.
So it's not only important to go after lucrative keywords,
but you also need to conduct search intent analysis
to see where in the funnel that particular person might be,
but it's also important to optimize
and create pages for people who are at all stages
of the funnel or their customer journey, as it's also known.
So a common mistake that a lot of businesses actually make
is they try to go after it and spend all their resources
actually going after the bottom of funnel
or transactional intent keywords,
such as "buy iPhone 12 mini".
However, if you're only going after the bottom of funnel
and transactional intent-based keywords,
well someone at that stage doesn't know who you are.
They haven't built any trust with you,
you don't have a reputation with them yet.
There's no trust there, and if there's no trust,
they're not going to enter their credit card details
on your website.
What you need to actually do is you need to actually create
content for every single stage of the funnel.
And the reason you do this is because you need to nurture
your leads so that those people begin to know,
like, and trust you,
and when it comes to that stage of their customer journey
where they're happy enough to hand over
their credit card details,
they've already been on your website,
you've already given them great value,
you've already given them great content,
they already trust you,
they'll be more than likely happy to use your website
to put their credit card details into.
So believe it or not, your conversion rates
actually will increase by creating content
for every single stage of the funnel,
not just the bottom of funnel.
So basically what I'm saying is, make sure that you have
content that is relevant, and first of all,
targets the informational intent keywords.
Secondly, for someone who's further down
in the customer journey,
make sure you have commercial intent based keywords
for that person on their customer journey.
And as we just mentioned, when they're finally
at the stage where they're at the bottom of the funnel,
they'll enter transactional keywords
and then you will appear.
Now, one thing I personally find quite strange
about search intent is that search intent
only takes a couple of seconds,
literally just a couple of seconds to determine.
Because all you need to do
is Google the keyword you're trying to target on Google,
that literally takes two seconds to do and is free.
This is one of the only quick and free things
that you can do in SEO and yet people,
for whatever reason do not do it.
So I would highly highly recommend that whatever keywords
that you've created and gathered in keyword research,
that you begin to actually look
at the intent of all those particular keywords.
Now if you do have a big list of keywords,
looking at the intent of all those will take time,
however, this is what we do for every single client.
Once we're conducting keyword research for a client,
we will have a look at the keywords
that we've gathered that we believe will be relevant.
But then as we start to go through them,
we'll actually find out very, very quickly
whether those keywords are going to be relevant
to that particular business or not.
Another quick example of how search intent can differ
so much is if you run a particular venue
and there's a gig on that night,
there's a band playing, okay?
And people are able to use a particular ticket system
to buy those tickets.
If you were to rank for the term "ticket system",
it's not gonna work because that industry, bands, music,
all that sort of stuff, or whether it be sports events,
whatever it might be, if you look up "ticket system",
Google has determined that the search intent
is that when someone searches "ticket system",
they want to see, IT help desk ticket systems.
IT help desk tickets support solutions,
all of that sort of stuff.
"Tickets systems" might be what you thought
you want to rank for and you've optimized
your website for it,
but no matter how much you optimize that,
Google will not put you on page one
because they know that that particular keyword,
even though it's relevant to your business,
it's also relevant to a very, very different business.
And they think that's what people want to see.
This is why it's so, so important
to take the time to do search intent analysis,
because you could be in an extremely difficult
uphill battle, trying to rank
for what you believe is a relevant keyword,
but Google just won't let you rank for that keyword.
Now, in most cases,
the keywords that you think you want to rank for,
to be honest, 90% of them or so
will actually be relevant and will have
the correct search intent analysis,
but it's still so, so important to conduct this analysis.
Because again, you could be in an extremely difficult
uphill battle, and it only takes a few seconds
to actually have a look at this.
So that brings us to an end of this video,
which is all about search intent,
what it is and the different types of search intent.
If you do have any questions or comments,
please do leave them below because we'll do our very best
to reply to each and every single comment
or question that we do have.
If you wanna have a bit more
information about this sort of stuff,
we do have a blog post all about this and I'll leave a link
for that in the description below.
But other than that,
hopefully you got a bit of value from this video.
Hopefully you have a good day
and we'll talk again soon, bye.