﻿Google tries to show the most relevant results for any given query.
But what happens if people want different things?
I mean, if someone searches for "apple," do they want this, this, or this?
This is called fractured or mixed intent.
Or according to Google's Quality Rater Guidelines," queries with multiple meanings."
And they actually show an example of how they would handle this query.
And that's through dominant, common, and minor interpretations.
But it's not always this easy.
And seeing as search intent is one of the most important things in SEO to get right, you need
to know how to handle mixed or fractured SERPs.
Because if you can't match one of the intents, then you're not going to rank.
So in this tutorial, I'm going to show you how to interpret intent for SERPs, even
when it might seem completely random.
Stay tuned.
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So if you're not familiar with search intent, it represents the reason behind a searcher's query.
And finding search intent is usually done by looking at the top ranking pages for
a target query.
For example, when someone searches for "crockpot recipes," it's quite clear that
they want to see pages that include lists of slow cooker recipes.
And we know this because all of the top- ranking pages for this query are doing that.
Search intent is clear so if we wanted to compete, it's just a matter of following suit.
Now, if we search for just "crockpot," you'll see that intent is mixed.
I mean, do people want to go to the manufacturer's website?
Buy a crockpot online?
Go and visit a store nearby?
Or get a list of slow cooker recipes?
More importantly, can you rank for this query and if so, what type of page should you create?
Now, in order to come to an educated decision, we need to talk about the types of search intent
that SEOs generally look for.
And these are usually categorized in four buckets.
Informational, navigational, commercial investigation, and transactional.
So informational queries are ones where people are looking for information.
They want to learn.
So "crockpot recipes," "what is seo," etc. would generally be considered informational.
And pretty much any site can rank for these through articles.
As for navigational queries, these are ones where someone is looking for a specific
website or place to go.
For example, "google analytics login," "amazon garden hose," or "mexican restaurant near me."
Now, for the most part, you probably won't go after navigational queries that aren't
about your brand.
Because even if you do rank for that keyword, you probably won't get much traffic from it.
For example, the query, "bank of america login" gets around 1.6 million monthly searches
in the US.
And if we go to the Traffic share by pages report in Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer, you'll
see that the first page gets the majority of traffic, the second to their mobile app gets a tiny fraction
of it, and then the result in position 3 gets virtually no search traffic from this query.
And that's because no one else can serve this intent other than the Bank of America.
Now, if we look at the Traffic share by pages report for another navigational query like
"bank of america routing number," you'll see that Wise.com gets a decent amount
of traffic from this keyword.
And that's likely because intent doesn't need to be served from the bank.
In fact, Wise has created tons of pages around bank routing numbers, which leads to hundreds
of thousands of monthly search visits.
Now, commercial investigation queries are ones where the searcher is likely in
the market for a product or service but has yet to make a final decision.
So think of your typical "best of" affiliate posts, reviews, and comparisons.
Searchers are basically weighing out their options but have yet to make a more
specific decision.
And these queries are fair game if you have products or services to sell
or if you run an affiliate site.
And finally are transactional queries, which are queries that show that a searcher is
looking to purchase something specific.
For example, "buy optimum nutrition protein powder."
And these queries are usually reserved for websites that sell that product or service.
Now, these "intent buckets" are far from perfect.
And one of many problems is that SERPs often can't be categorized in one bucket.
Meaning, there are multiple intents, just as Google had said.
In reality, a single SERP can have pages that serve all four intents.
So to get a better idea of dominant intent, you need to get the full scope of the SERP.
And there are 3 main things you need to include in your analysis.
The first and probably most important are the organic blue link search results.
Plain and simple, you want to look at the top-ranking pages for your target query.
And ideally, you'll want to analyze the SERP from a location where you hope to rank.
In addition, you'll want to sign out of your Google account and use private
or incognito mode to remove any personalization factors.
You can do this using a VPN, with Ahrefs' SEO toolbar, or if you're doing local SEO
and need a SERP from a specific city, town, or even zip code, you can search for a keyword
from a target location using Ahrefs' Rank Tracker.
Now, once you have the search results in front of you, you'll want to look at the top pages and
look for the intent they're trying to serve.
So are they trying to teach you something?
Is a common brand showing up?
Do they want to sell you something?
Or do they want to give you education on a product?
Now, while you can infer much of this from the titles and descriptions, you should actually
visit the pages and look at the so-called "content intent" of each ranking page.
And by "content intent," I'm referring to the intent the page is trying to serve -
not the SERP.
For example, if we look at the SERP for car loan, you'd probably think from the titles and URLs that
all of these pages are lead-gen landing pages.
And if you click on the first result, you'll see that that's true.
But if you click on the result from BankRate, their content is actually less transactional
and looks more commercial and informational as you can see from the pricing table and their
table of contents.
Alright, so let's put this into action and look at the SERP for the query, "keyword research"
where intent is fractured.
And I just want to note that I'll only be looking at the organic blue link results
for this assessment.
So we have some blog posts that are showing informational intent like these how-to guides.
Then we have these landing pages that are free keyword research tools.
So in my opinion, the intent for this SERP is informational and commercial,
the former being dominant.
Alright, let's move on to the second thing you should look at and that's SERP features.
SERP features are anything that appear in Google's search results other than
the organic blue link pages.
So that includes local packs, knowledge panels, people also ask, ads, and I'll stop
listing them out because there are a ton of them and this list is far from exhaustive.
Now, SERP features actually help to paint a clearer picture of how Google sees user intent.
For example, if you look at the search results for the query "raleigh seo," you'd probably
think that it's a commercial and transactional query because nearly all of the top-ranking
pages are homepages and landing pages from SEO agencies who sell SEO services.
Now, if we look at the full SERP, you'll see that there are a ton of ads that are trying
to do the same thing as the organic results further confirming transactional intent.
But there's also a knowledge panel for the company, "Raleigh SEO company."
Meaning, this could also be a partial navigational query.
Because while the majority of people are likely looking for an SEO company
in Raleigh North Carolina to work with, some might actually be looking for the entity "Raleigh
SEO Company."
And as you can see, they rank in pole position for the query too.
So let's look back at our list of SERP features and categorize how they give us clues about intent.
And the keyword here is "clues" because again, you need to take multiple things into account.
Also, SERP features can fit into multiple buckets.
For example, featured snippets can appear for both informational and commercial
investigation queries like "what are primary colors" and "best golf clubs."
So here's a list of how I think SERP features map to intent, take a screenshot and let's
move on to the third thing to analyze and that's SERP stability vs. volatility.
Stability or volatility within a SERP can tell us a bit about search intent.
For example, if the top-anking pages are jumping in and out of the top 100,
then search intent may not be clear.
Now, on the other hand, if the top-ranking pages have been consistently ranking on
page one for an extended period of time, then it tells us that intent is likely clear.
For example, if we look at the last 12 months of position data for the query, "how to make
chicken soup," you'll see that the top 6 pages have consistently held their top-ranking position.
And the little bits of movement are just signs of healthy competition.
Now, if we look at the position history graph for the query "play," you'll see that different pages
have been popping in and out of the top 10.
The SERP is volatile.
And just look at the variance in the pages that are ranking.
There's Google's Play Store, their support page and Twitter account, a few definitions
of the word "play," a stock ticker called "play," and Playstation's homepage.
Based on just the URLs alone, intent is dominantly navigational and commonly informational.
Now, it's not to say that you should only target stable SERPs because they both
come with their pros and cons.
Generally speaking, stable SERPs will be harder to get a top ranking position,
at least for competitive queries.
But there's also a level of predictability when trying to rank for these queries.
It's basically just a matter of content and links.
Whereas volatile SERPs can be faster to rank in, but there can be a lot of uncertainty
in terms of if you can rank.
Now, it'd be all rainbows and butterflies if we could accurately define strict criteria
and categorize them into one or more intent buckets.
Then we'd know exactly how to approach page creation.
But the truth about these "intent buckets" is that the methodology is broken because
a) there are like a million and one "it depends" kind of SERPs;
b) SERPs change, meaning intent can change too;
c) SERPs are often different based on one's location;
and d), which is probably the most important, is that people's interpretation of intent will vary.
To prove my point, I asked Josh, head of content at Ahrefs, and Patrick, our resident
technical SEO to give me their opinions on search intent for these keywords.
We all jotted down our answers, without peeking, and here are the results from this exercise.
As you can see, our interpretation of intent on the whole was quite different.
In fact, the only keyword we had identical answers for was "ama" - a navigational query.
But one thing that stood out is that we actually all chose the same dominant
intent for the queries.
So I want to leave you with one key takeaway.
Instead of stressing out for hours about overall intent, or worse, wasting several
man-hours arguing with your colleagues, focus on creating top notch pages that
match the dominant intent of users.
And if you can't serve that intent but really want to rank for that topic, then consider
going after the common intent or just let it go.
Bottomline: don't overcomplicate things.
At Ahrefs, we simplify this by using what we call the "3 Cs of search intent."
And while it doesn't give us a bucket to throw a query in, it keeps us
laser-focused on serving prospects, our existing customer base, and we actually
rank our pages for meaningful topics.
We have a full tutorial that goes into how you can use this method in our free SEO course,
so I'll link that up in the description.
Now, if you enjoyed this tutorial, then make sure to like, share, and subscribe for more actionable
SEO and marketing tutorials.
I'll see you in the next one.