So picture the scene. You’re an expert in a particular subject and you are getting ready to share your extensive knowledge on that subject with a room full of like-minded people at a huge conference. 

You’ve got your notes. You’ve got your visual aids. And you know the beats you need to hit that will likely lead to a standing ovation and you becoming the hit of the conference. Go you! 

There’s just one problem. 

This isn’t the conference you expected. 

In fact, it’s about a completely different industry. One you know nothing about!

And, if that wasn’t bad enough, you’ve brought along a 20-minute presentation and a slide pack. But everyone else is expecting to sit on a panel and field on-the-spot questions. Yikes!

Now apart from the fact that this would be the result of a MAJOR oversight on the part of both you and the event organiser, this hypothetical situation is a good illustration of what we’re talking about today - search intent. 

Search intent? What’s that? 

Otherwise known as “user intent” or “audience intent”, “search intent” refers to the motivation behind an online search. 

When you search for something via an online search engine, that search engine wants to serve you up the best results. Otherwise, why would you keep using it? 

With that in mind, search engines (Google, in particular) have become super-savvy at uncovering the reasons people search in the first place. 

Example:

Say you’re looking for a list of episodes for the American sitcom, Community. You type the word “Community” into the search bar, and what appears? 

A Knowledge Panel on the right hand side giving you details on the TV programme, including reviews, where you can watch it, cast, writers, and so on. 

But, how did the search engine know that when you typed “Community”, you meant the TV show and weren’t looking for a definition of the word itself? 

Well, that comes down to the search engine’s algorithm which is constantly learning from its users and utilising the vast amount of data it collects to refine its search results. 

For example, if a bunch of people search “Community” and are presented with multiple entries giving the definition of the word and those same people don’t find what they’re looking for and instead search “Community TV show”, the algorithm starts to pick up on a pattern and adapts the search engine results it presents to give searchers what they’re actually looking for.

It’s much more complicated than that, but you get the idea. 

So, how does search intent affect your target keywords? 

Using your seed word as a base, you’ll have likely been presented with “relevant” keywords that attract thousands of searches per month. 

On the face of it, going after these keywords in your site copy and meta data might seem like a good idea. More searches means more traffic to your site, right? 

Not if search intent has anything to do with it. 

Let’s take the example of “digital marketing”. If you offer this service and have a landing page on your site that you want to rank, you might use that as your seed word to start your keyword research. And you might be delighted to find that (as of this moment), those specific search words are used approximately 13,000 times a month! 

Wow! That’s a lot of potential traffic! 

Now, let’s remove the difficulty of actually ranking for this rather vague keyword for a second. And let’s look at the search engine results page. 

Do you see any businesses like yours offering digital marketing services in the organic search results (i.e. not ads and not local business listings)?

Nope. 

The term is too general, so instead the content is more focused around what digital marketing is as a concept and how you can learn more about it through courses. And though that might introduce your audience to a new career path, it’s not going to lead them to your services page. 

How do I use search intent to my advantage?

The basic idea to keep in mind when you’re considering which keywords you want to rank for is that your content should “fit”.

So, going after a more niche keyword with less search volume that brings up results that feel similar to yours might be the better way to go.

So, if you’re trying to get a specific service page on your site to rank in the search results, you want it to end up sitting alongside similar content, perhaps even your competitors’ websites!

That way, you know you’re matching the search intent. The search engine has made a best guess that the searcher is looking for your particular service and serves up content accordingly.

And it may be that one of the keywords you try doesn’t bring up other business’s service pages, but instead returns a list of blogs. That’s ok. That could be your cue to create a blog around the subject so you can once again match the search intent of the user.

So, stop preaching to the wrong choir and find the audience that is interested in what you have to say and are ready to be converted by your content.