Understanding Your Users' Search Intent

What does 'keyword search intent' mean? Here's an explanation and some examples from Marius JOST, founder of Digital Strategy Consultants.

1) Informational Intent

Many internet searches are conducted by people who are simply looking for information. This can be information about:

• the weather,
• child-rearing
• information about SEO.

People with informational intent have a specific question or want to learn more about a particular topic.

Example of Informational Search Intent

You should be aware that Google's understanding of intent goes far beyond producing results that provide information about a specific term.

For example, the search engine knows that people searching for "risotto" are most likely looking for recipes and not the culinary history of the sauce.

Google even understands that for some search terms like [How to build a table], including videos and images is useful.

2) Navigational Intent

The second type of search intent is called navigational intent. People with this intent want to visit a specific website. For example, people who search online for "Facebook" are usually looking for Facebook's website. So you want to make sure your website is found when someone searches online for your company name.

Example of Navigational Search Intent

Remember that it's mainly beneficial to rank high for a navigation-related term if your website is the website people are looking for. A few years ago, we had a Google Analytics plugin and ranked quite well for the term [Google Analytics]. But that didn't bring traffic to our website. People specifically searching for [Google Analytics] were looking for the Google Analytics website and often had no interest in our plugin.

3) Transactional Intent

The third type of search intent is transactional intent. Many people search the internet to find the optimal product or a well-fitting service.

People search with transactional intent when their goal is to buy something at that moment.

Often this means they already know exactly what they want to buy and want to get straight to the product page.

Example of Transactional Search Intent

Someone enters "Panasonic LUMIX S9".

4) Commercial Investigation

Some people intend to buy in the (near) future and use the internet to do their research. Which washing machine is the best? Which SEO plugin is most helpful?

These people also have transactional intent, but they need a little more time and persuasion.

These types of search intents are usually referred to as commercial investigation.

Example of Commercial Investigation Search Intent

"best video camera 2023"

Keywords with transactional intent often contain words like: "online shop", "provider", "price", "buy", "offer", "discount" or the exact product name or product number.

Conclusion

Words that people use in their search queries usually give us insight into users' intent and where they currently stand in the buying process.