From now on, if you want to rank on Google, you need to create content that matches the user’s search intent.
It’s not very easy to emphasize how important understanding search intent is for SEO. If you want to achieve rankings from now on, you must create content with search intent in mind.
Table of Contents
What is Search Intention (Purpose)?
Search intent is the reason behind a search query. In other words, it is an indication of why the person is doing this search. Does he want to learn something? Does he want to buy something? Or are they looking for a specific site?
To help illustrate this concept in more detail, we need only review a few searches. For example, consider a search for “chocolate cake recipes”. What do you think is the reason for this search?
- The user wants to make a cake that they will prepare themselves.
- Searches for the fastest and best recipe.
- He or she visits the website that offers the fastest and best chocolate cake recipe.
The user visits the first site but finds that the cake recipe takes 1 hour. He or she intends to find a quick cake recipe. What will he do? He or she will visit another site and have a good experience on the site that offers a cake recipe that takes less time.
Why Search Intent is Important for SEO?
Google’s goal is to provide users with the most relevant results for their queries. But how do we know this?
For starters, this is what Google’s success is all about. Just by looking at Bing, you can see what happens when a search engine’s results are low quality and irrelevant.
Almost no one prefers Bing as a search engine. This means less revenue from advertising. On the other hand, it is important to remember that Google has a mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”.
But we have to look at the SEO aspect. We need to think about why any of these are important. In 2025, if you want to rank on Google, you need to deliver the relevant result for the query. First of all, you need to create content that is relevant to that search intent.
So if you are trying to rank for “best credit card”, you should stop pushing landing pages. This will not work. Google knows what users want to see when they search for this query and this is not what they want to see.
In short, relevance is at the heart of SEO success.
Four Types of Search Intention
There are four different types of search intention. Knowledge of these will help you to better understand search intent.
Information
It indicates that the searcher is looking for information. This could be the answer to a simple question like “Who is the president of United States?”. On the other hand, it can be a topic that requires a longer and more comprehensive answer, such as “How to do SEO?”. However, you should not think that all information searches are questions.
- “Who is Fatih MUTLU?”
- “Ottawa Driving Directions”
- “Donald Trump”
- “Match Scores”
- “WordPress”
Navigation
The person searching is looking for a specific site. They already know where they want to go. They’re Googling it, probably because they think it’s faster and easier than typing the URL into the address bar.
Transactional
The seeker wants to make a purchase. They are very close to making a purchase. They probably already know what they want to buy. In short, they are looking for something to buy.
- “Buy MacBook Pro”
- “Amazon coupon code”
- “Cheapest iPhone 16 Pro”
- “Spotify Premium Price”
Commercial Research
The researcher is in the market for a particular product or service. But they have not made a final decision about which solution is right for them. They are most likely doing reviews and comparisons. They are still weighing up the options and trying to move forward.
- “Best Protein Powder”
- “YouTube Music Review”
- “Best Restaurant in Ottawa”
This last example is particularly striking. It shows that many local surveys have a commercial research purpose. “The plumber near me”, ‘The cheapest hotel in Ottawa’, etc. are other examples.
How to Make Sense of Search Intent?
Search intent is usually clear from the query itself. For example, consider the keyword “buy bitcoin”. The searcher is looking to buy cryptocurrency (transactional). On the other hand, someone searching for “how to tie a tie” is looking for answers (informational).
Below are some “modifier” keywords that indicate a specific type of search intent:
- Information
- How
- What
- Who
- Where
- Why
- Guide
- Education
- Source
- Ideas
- Tips
- Learn
- Samples
- Navigation
- Brand names
- Product name
- Service name
- Transactional
- Buy
- Coupon
- Order
- Inexpensive
- Price
- Pricing
- Commercial Research
- Best
- Featured
- Review
- Comparison
Everything is Hidden in SERP
If you’ve ever searched Google, you’ve probably seen the featured snippet in the results. This is just one of the search engine results page features that Google uses. In addition to this, there are features such as:
- Shopping Results
- Information Card
- Google Ads
- Related Questions
- Video Results
Google tends to show certain SERP features depending on the intent of the search. This means that we can use the presence (or absence) of SERP features to help understand the search intent of a query.
Shopping results and other visual slides usually only appear for transactional queries.
To summarize briefly, it would be much more accurate to combine the following snippet features with search intent types:
- Information
- Featured Snippet
- Information Card
- Videos
- Users Also Asked
- Navigation
- Site Links
- Tweet Box
- Information Panel
- Commercial Research
- Google Ads
- Featured Snippet
- Transactional
- Google Ads
- Shopping Results
How to Optimize for Search Intention?
The search intent should determine the type of content you create. If the keyword has an informational intent, write a blog post. If it has a transactional intent, create a product page. It’s as simple as that, but it’s not always what you expect.
Even if aligning content with search intent makes obvious sense, you may run into an obvious problem. The four search intent groups are too broad to be actionable.
For example, we know that an HTML5 query is an informational query. But knowing this doesn’t tell us what kind of content the caller really wants to see. It also doesn’t tell you what they want to know and what format you should use to present that information.
For this reason, we will need to examine the search engine results page in more detail before optimizing for search intent. You can follow the steps below to do this.
Step 1: Check SERP Reliability
Google’s rankings are not fixed. They fluctuate and change over time. This can be a problem if you rely on the structure of the current top ranking pages to infer search intent. You won’t be able to assess search intent based on a single snapshot.
If you were to analyze the top ranking pages next month or the month after that, your understanding of search intent might be different. Therefore, you should check the ranking history of the target keyword. To do this, analyze your keyword with Search Console.
Let’s take a look at how to read the graph that the word “SEO” reveals:
Little or no fluctuation in rankings over time
This indicates that the current top-level pages are a good source for search intent.
If you look at the graph, you will see that there has been little change in the last three months. These are good keywords with a clear search volume.
Now let’s take a look at the query “Ottawa Digital Marketing Agency”.
There is a lot of fluctuation in the ranking
Too much fluctuation in rankings indicates that search intent is constantly changing. Google struggles to understand the real intent behind the search.
Step 2: Make Sure Content Complies with the “4Cs”
Now that you know your chosen keyword is solid, your next task is to analyze the search results for the “4Cs of search intent”. So what do the 4Cs represent?
- Content style
- Content type
- Content format
- Content angle
Let us now consider this process in more detail.
1. Content Style
This refers to the “style” of content in the search results. It is usually text or video. For example, if you search for “macbook pro unboxing” the first page results will all be video.
If you want to achieve ranking, you need to adapt to it.
2. Content Type
This refers to the general type of content in the search results and is usually one of the following:
- Blog Post
- Product Page
- Category Page
- Landing Page
For example, check out the best search results for “Free SEO Tool”:
You could say that most of the titles are blog posts.
Let’s search for “Buy Red Shoes”.
From the titles and URLs, you can see that all results are e-commerce category pages like the one below:
Your task is to look for the most dominant type of content in the search results, then make sure your content matches it.
3. Content Format
This refers to the “format” of top-level pages. Some common formats include:
- How-To Guides
- Step-by-Step Trainers
- List Publications
- Vision Parts
- Reviews
- Comparisons
There are many different formats. But these should give you an idea of what to look out for. For example, if you look at the result “how to make chicken soup” you will see that most of them are how-to guides.
On the other hand, most of the “best places to travel in Canada” results are list-style publications:
On the other hand, for queries like “how to write a book” we often see step-by-step guides like the one below:
It makes the most sense to follow the crowd when creating your content. If most of the top pages are how-to guides, create a how-to guide. If they publish lists, then create a list-style publication. This is how the math works.
The content format mostly applies to information and business research queries. This is because these are the types of queries that tend to rank blog posts.
There is not much to say about content format when it comes to transactional queries. Nine out of ten people will search for a product or category page. So the content format is usually aligned with the type of content.
4. Content Angle
This refers to the unique “selling points” of the top-ranked publications and pages. It gives insight into what searchers value when conducting this specific search.
For example, if you look at the search results for “how to make apple pie”, you may see different but similar angles in the results.
We can highlight a few of them as follows:
- “Traditional Recipe”
- “Super Delicious”
- “Home Made”
- “Detailed Explanation”
The step of optimizing the content angle is a task that will require you to follow the industry. This doesn’t mean you should copy them. However, if they all include price in their content, title tags and meta descriptions, and you include quality, you will fall behind the competition.
Step 3: Get Tips from Top-Ranked Pages
Everything discussed so far works at a glance to understand search intent and decide what kind of content to create. However, if you are really serious about targeting a keyword, you need to analyze both the search engine results page and the top ranking pages in more detail.
This is the only way to understand what people want to see and what your content should be about. Below are some ways to do this.
1. Look for “People also ask”
Google’s “People also ask” box will tell you which questions searchers tend to ask. For example, take a look at the search results for “how to make chicken pot pie”:
These are questions you might want to answer in your content.
2. Perform Content Gap Analysis at Page Level
A content gap analysis is typically used to find content gaps at the domain level. However, you can do a page-level content gap analysis. This can give you insight into the subtopics that searchers want to be covered on your page.
Here you will need the Ahrefs tool.
For example, paste the top few pages for the search “protein powder” into Ahrefs’ Content Gap tool. Leave the bottom box empty and start searching.
3. Visit the Best Pages
You can learn the most about search intent by visiting the best pages. In fact, there is no other way to really understand what searchers want to see.
If we do this for the best results in the search for “best protein powder”, we can see that some pages mention the best types of protein powder.
Others talk about the best protein powder products to buy.
It seems that there are two different interpretations of the query “best protein powder”. But this information is not available on the search engine results page.
If you have already created a piece of content on this topic, you need to decide which angle is best for your content. You are also likely to cover both angles to some extent.
There are some interesting things you might notice about search intent after looking at the top ranking pages:
- Images are important: Searchers actually want to see which protein powders are the best.
- Purchase links are useful: This is meaningful and important as this is a business research keyword.
- Segmentation by diet is important: People don’t want a generic list of the best protein powders. They want to know which one is best for certain types of diets. So you have to include some vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free information.
In short, you should always review the top ranking pages before creating content.
As a Result
Search intent is now one of the most important ranking factors. If you can’t give searchers what they want, you will never have a chance to rank. You can easily notice this in every content you publish.
You may be able to fool Google for a while and even achieve rankings with your low quality page. But this will not last very long. Tomorrow, next month or even next year, the ranking you achieve will drop in a way you never expected.
If you want to rank in the long term, giving searchers what they want should be your top priority. Google will reward you for doing this.
