When someone hits “enter” on a search engine, what’s their purpose? Or at least, what’s their search’s purpose to them?

Crucially, there is no one answer — so for Google, understanding the intention of someone’s search is the top priority.

What does that mean for you?

Consider the Chicken

“How to make chicken.”

If someone searches for that, the top results are for recipes. They’re blogs and videos, not brick-and-mortar businesses or products from an ecommerce site. That’s because Google knows that search is someone looking to learn, not buy.

On the flip side, a search for “best sources to buy organic chicken” does the opposite. Top results here are for local businesses or ecommerce pages. Here too, Google understands what the user is looking for.

And search intent isn’t always so blatant as searches so literal as those examples. But if you want your site to rank highly on Google, then understanding search intent and aligning your content respectively is crucial.

Types of Search Intent

Before you understand how to align your content with users’ intent, you have to understand different search intents themselves. It’s helpful to break down intent into four different categories:

• Navigational
• Informational
• Transactional
• Commercial

Navigational intent means the user is looking for a specific page or site but instead of typing the URL in, they search for it. A funny example of this is your grandma Googling “facebook” instead of just going straight to the URL Facebook.com. Searches like these are dominated by branded keywords.

Informational intent is when the user has a specific question they want answered. These sometimes begin with one of the five W’s (or one H) — that is, people searching for “how to,” “where is,” what, why, who, or when. (“How do flying squirrels fly?” or “What’s the capital of Slovenia?” or “Why are my toenails discolored?” Is that last one too gross? Sorry…)

Then there’s transactional intent. Here, the user wants to complete an action, i.e. a conversion. It’s important to remember that, while we often tend to conflate “conversions” and “purchases,” they aren’t the same thing. Sure, oftentimes conversions are purchases, but they can also be a form submission, store visit, phone call, email sign-up, or a bunch of other things. Some more abstract conversions can be hard to measure in digital analytics — but that doesn’t mean they don’t matter!

Lastly, we have commercial intent. Unlike transactional intent, commercial intent means one thing: the user is searching to buy something. Similar to transactional intent, content aligned here is great for offering free versions of products, deals, trials, etc., to help your brand get in front of eyes and a foot in the door.

So, besides some of the things we mentioned above, what are some characteristics of these different intents?

For one, are there operative words in the search? Which ones? “Why” or “how”? Typically these indicate the user is still in the process of researching to make an informed purchase. (Either that, or they really are just wondering how flying squirrels fly.)

For example, consider the following queries: “Why do I need a laptop touch screen?” or “How do laptop touch screens work?” It’s reasonable to conclude this user’s purchase of a laptop isn’t imminent — but it will likely be in the future.

That said, it’s not like this verbiage is black and white; search queries beginning with other words (“What is the advantage of a touchscreen laptop?”) can indicate similar or the same intent. Furthermore, most searches don’t even include any full question, regardless of intent (“advantages touchscreen laptop,” for example). It’s naive to think most search queries are typed out in full question, perfect English — after all, think about how often you search and how frequently your query is a mere scatter of keywords.

Still, phrases and patterns come up that are solid for interpreting intent even in the keyword search pot pie that is most people’s queries; obviously, searches with “buy” are pretty straightforward indicators. Searches with verbiage about comparing products indicate the user’s in the process of deciding what they want — and that there’s a possibility of them going directly from the research to purchase from there.

Why this all matters

So… what?

In one sentence, identifying intent is important because it allows you to more accurately target search users.

From there, you can build content around the different audience needs based on their intent. Offers for those looking to buy, enticing expository content and the promise of more for those inclined to convert on an email list, or educational content for those who want to learn. Contrarily, content that’s poorly-aligned (or not aligned at all) with a user’s intent can alienate them. If your landing page, for example, is constantly pushing the user to buy when they’re not remotely looking to do so, you’ll likely drive them away — in some cases permanently, since that’s not exactly a great first impression.

Aligning yourself with user intent

So now we know basic ways to categorize intent and why it matters, but what’s the next step?

Well, you can infer from user intent where that person is in the marketing funnel, the model that charts the user decision and purchasing process.

Essentially, the stages therein consist of awareness (user is aware of your brand/product, but that’s about it), consideration (user still doesn’t know much else, but thinks they might want it), intent (user intends to buy a product but doesn’t know which brand’s or version to buy), evaluation (user is researching the product they likely intend to buy), and purchase (pretty self-explanatory).

You can then use this knowledge to align your content with the user’s searching needs.

A good example: when you’ve created a landing page whose purpose is convincing visitors to purchase something, avoid targeting too broadly in a way that will catch abstract queries. After all, someone asking “Why do I need this product” or “What are the features of this product” isn’t going to purchase at the moment, so don’t waste your energy and their patience trying to convince them otherwise. Doing so means their intent and its implications for where they are in the marketing funnel is unaligned with the content you’re showing them.

But that’s not all this is good for!

Along with using this information to update your search campaigns so they’re landing on the best page for users’ needs, this point of view is excellent for generating new content ideas, too.

That’s because chances are your content doesn’t already cover every single topic people could possibly want. So, if you’re ever in a rut trying to come up with new ideas, user intent is a great place to start.

Charting out the marketing funnel, you can then look at things from the user’s point of view at each step of the process and work backwards from there. What are the questions someone has at the awareness stage? Evaluation? What can you write that will help them in that process? Further, what keywords are they likely to use in their searches at that stage? Not only does addressing this help people out, but you increase their awareness of your brand while positioning it positively by being so useful in their decision-making process.

As we can see, understanding user intent is the foundation upon which lots can be done. Want to improve search performance? User intent. Want to make sure new content hits the ground running? User intent. Want to come up with more ideas for content? User intent.

As long as search engines exist, attention to user intent will be integral to successful online marketing.