SEMrushAcademy_20200511

Query Intent

Hey, I'm Greg Gifford. In this lesson, the third in the Keyword Research course, we're going to be talking a bit more about query intent, and why it's important to your keyword research efforts.

Now that you've asked your questions and you have a better understanding of what's important to the business and its potential customers, it's time to start building your keyword list.

But that's what we're talking about in the next lesson. Before we dive into compiling your list, I wanted to be sure you understand why search intent is so important.

The search results displayed for any query are based on what Google interprets to be the searcher's intent… It's not as much about the actual keywords being searched as it is about the meaning behind the search.

I'm talking about it now, because as you build your list of keyword phrases, you need to understand how intent will influence your keywords and the possible searches related to those phrases.

In Google's Quality Rater Guidelines, Google explains the 4 major intents that searchers have when conducting searches – to “know”, to “do”, finding a “website”, or “visit in person”.

Let's go a little bit deeper and look at how intent shapes search results.

With an informational query, the user is looking for a specific piece of information. These queries are more difficult to rank for, since Google usually just displays the info in an answer box.

If someone searches “who wrote Red Rising”, they'll see this answer box about Pierce Brown sourced from Wikipedia.

If someone searches “how tall is the Eiffel Tower”, Google will actually display the answer in the auto-complete dropdown, so you don't even have to finish typing your search… but if you do, you'll get a simple answer box – notice this one doesn't cite any source, as Google considers this to be public common knowledge.

With a navigational query, the user is looking for a particular destination on the internet.

If someone searches “SEMrush Academy” because they're looking for these awesome video lessons with the cool dude in the bow tie, Google serves up search results that let them navigate directly to the page they're looking for.

With a transactional query, the user is looking for something to buy or sign up for.

If someone searches “hotel in London”, they'll see a page listing various methods of finding and booking a hotel room in London.

With a local query, the user is looking for something in their local area.

If someone searches for “coffee shop”, they get a list of nearby coffee shops. If they're searching for options in a different city and change their query to “Chicago coffee shop”, Google will return a list of coffee shops in Chicago.

As you start to compile your keyword list, test the phrases in Google. You can figure out what Google has decided the intent of that phrase is by looking at the search results page.

If you search for “sneakers”, you'll see mixed intent. Google displays a shopping carousel of ads at the top of the page, then a local pack in case the user intends to buy the shoes from a location nearby. It's definitely a transactional intent, but Google's not sure if the user wants to buy online or at a local store.

In the last lesson, I talked about asking questions to understand more about the business and its customers – and I told you to ask about why customers bought from the business. If you understand the problem or need that the business is solving for the customers, it's easier to understand how those customers will search for the business.

If you understand how they'll search for the business, it's easier to infer their search intent. You can test those queries to assess whether or not Google understands the same intent. You'll be able to create better content that more accurately addresses what the searcher is looking for.

So that's it for lesson 3 of the Keyword Research course, we hope you learned something awesome. If you've got any questions, feel free to tweet them to me directly at @greggifford or the awesome team of pros over at the SEMrush Academy at @semrushacademy.

Don't forget to check out the next lesson, and when you think you're ready, head over to the SEMrush Academy page and take the test for this course so you can get officially SEMrush certified.

 

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Continue learning by using this list of educational resources to help you study and master your new skills.

1. Learn what can hurt your SEO rankings.

2. Check out the SEMrush tools that can be used to boost your local online visibility.

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Question 1

Fill in the blanks: The search query 'tickets to Hong Kong' is an example of an _________.

 

A. informational query

B. navigational query

C. transactional query

D. mixed intent query