Why Search Intent is So Important in 2022

Intro

Are you struggling to get your content to rank? Have you previously had pages that rank and now they don’t? Is your traffic slowly and awkwardly dwindling down to nothing?

Google is now putting a lot more emphasis on search intent. Even if your content has great links and great information, if it’s not checking all of the boxes then your rankings can and will suffer. Your blog posts and website content need to answer a user’s intent if you want to be successful.

This is why search intent is so important in 2022 and will continue to be a ranking factor moving forward.

Don’t freak out. You can fix this issue. Today, we’re taking a deep dive into user intent and how you can use this knowledge to improve your content, increase sales and traffic, and get your website back to a healthy state.

What is Search Intent?

Search intent is a term that is used interchangeably with the term user intent. It is the goal of a user’s search they have typed into a search engine.

As Google’s AI has evolved over the years, it has become better at realizing what this intent is and then providing the best possible answers to their query in the form of the search engine results pages, also known as the SERPs.

Let’s look at an example. If someone searches for the term “General Tso’s chicken” then they likely want a recipe. If they wanted takeout, then they probably would have searched for something like “Chinese food delivery near me”.

The 4 Main Types of Search Intent

The example we used above is a bit of a dumbed-down explanation so let’s take a deeper dive into types of search intent and how you can use it to rank your content.

Navigational Intent

Navigational intent is by far the easiest type of search query to explain. This involves someone looking for a specific website or brand.

If someone types in “Nike” into Google, then the search engine knows to put the main Nike website at the top of the SERPs. Someone wants to go directly to the source. Maybe they’re doing research on the latest sneaker releases. Maybe Nike has an awesome blog.

It doesn’t matter. They want Nike so that’s what Google gives them.

How to Use Navigational Intent

You want to use navigational intent to rank for your website. If your company is named XYZ then you obviously want to rank #1 for XYZ when someone types it into a search engine.

Believe it or not, some businesses struggle with this, especially when they have a common name. Building quality links, practicing on-page SEO, generating content on a regular basis, and being active on social media are great ways to get your new business ranked quickly for its name.

Informational Intent

As a website owner, knowing and understanding the value of informational intent is a huge deal. This includes “how-to” content, maybe directions from one city to another, educational content, etc…

People want information. This is especially true when it comes to products and services. Consumers like to research potential purchases before they buy. In fact, 87% of shoppers now begin product searches on the web.

This means informational intent is more important than ever. Unfortunately, a lot of people trying to make money online are being overly pushy when it comes to sales and don’t understand the intent of their audience.

How to Use Informational Intent

So how can anyone use this type of search intent? Let’s say you love gaming and you’ve built a successful audience as a streamer. Then you decide to leverage this audience to build a website and make money through gaming affiliate programs.

Build content around informational intent with ideas such as:

• How to Set Up a Twitch Stream in 5 steps
• Twitch Vs. YouTube: Which is the Best Streaming Platform for You?
• 10 Reasons Why You Should Start Streaming

Keep in mind that the audience reading this is at the beginning of the sales funnel. They want information and help. So be helpful.

However, you should feel free to add internal links into this content that goes to product reviews or other types of content that contain affiliate links or other types of sales pages.

Commercial Investigation

Commercial investigation is where the searcher is getting a bit more serious about making a purchase. The consumer is kind of in between the informational intent and transactional intent stage. Essentially, they are in the middle of the sales funnel.

Right now, this consumer is looking for a bit more information but they have a much clearer idea of what they want and how they want it.

They want to see content like reviews, especially comparisons. They want to see VS.-type battle content to see how certain products hold up against their competitors. Round-ups are another great way to provide commercial investigation content.

How to Use Commercial Investigation

In this stage of the sales funnel, people are still exploring options. Using the gaming example, people now know they want to stream.

They’re 100% going to do it and now they want to know what products and services they need. Which are the best and how will they help this soon-to-be-streamer become the next big thing?

Your commercial investigation content can include posts like these:

• The 10 Best Pre-Built Gaming PCs for 2022
• 5 GPUs so Fast They will Blow Your Mind
• The Top 7 Products Every Streamer Need to Have in 2022

This is where you can find success jamming in affiliate links. But there is a catch. Because isn’t there always?

Thanks to Google’s review update, they are now rewarding reviewers doing a great job and punishing websites that are posting bad reviews.

How do you tell the difference? There are two important aspects of this. The first is to do the review yourself. Post pictures or videos of you handling and using the product. The second is to provide multiple links to the products being reviewed.

For a gaming website, this would include links to websites like Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, and Newegg.

Transactional Intent

Making a sale is a beautiful thing. It makes both parties feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Because of this, transactional intent keywords are the most competitive.

This is the bottom of the sales funnel, ladies and gentlemen. The trenches. Where people in the sales game are willing to fight dirty and take all of the glory.

To have success with transactional intent searches, it helps to use keywords like “buy”, “sale”, “shop” and the like. Customers are ready to make a purchase. If you want this purchase to be from you, then you’re going to need to outrank the competition in your space.

How to Use Transactional Intent

For affiliate marketers and anyone trying to make money online, like small and medium-sized businesses, you may be putting too much effort into transactional intent or not enough. This type of search intent has to be honed like a ninja sword.

Going back to our gaming example, let’s do a bit of brainstorming. You’re hitting your goals. The website is being actively Google’d because of quality content.

Your informational posts are helping people. The commercial investigation content is honing information down into a few products worthy of your readership’s time.

Maybe you’re getting a few sales here and there. But now it’s time to bring everything together with your transactional intent posts. What’s going to make your audience click that buy now button?

It comes down to getting people to your website and giving search engines the tools they need to help rank you well. This kind of content might look something like this for our gaming site idea:

• I Built the Best Gaming PC in the World - Here’s How I did It
• This is the Single Best GPU in the Game for 2022
• Revealing the Number One Product that Makes Me a Successful Streamer

It’s no longer about reviews and options at this point in the game. Now it’s about telling your audience what the best product or service is. Why is it amazing? Talk about how it helped you do something awesome.

Keep this content hyper-focused on the single product or service you intend to write about. Because that’s what people are searching for. That’s the product people are ready to buy. All they need is a slight nudge to get them there.

Some Final Thoughts on Why Search Intent is So Important in 2022

We did a pretty good job of making all of this sound easy. Unfortunately, nothing is ever as easy as it reads in a blog post.

The common denominator is great content. When you’re first starting out, that should be your focus. As your skills improve over time, then you should place more time and effort into specific intent.

Keep an eye on your rankings and your traffic to see what posts do well and this will also help you figure out how to improve the content that isn’t performing.

Thanks for hanging out all the way to the end of the post. If you found it useful, you’ll probably like this one on the basics of local SEO.