The 3 Most Important Types of Search Intent Queries

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Factors that influence a website’s SEO value are always changing. As we’ve discussed before, search engines are getting smarter: getting better at understanding user’s search queries and better at rewarding websites that actually provide an answer or solution for said queries.

When we say “intent query,” we mean the reason behind why someone searched the term that they did. All the way back in 2007 (which is like, a century ago in SEO years), Rand Fishkin identified the three most important search intent queries, and they still hold true today. More recently, Neil Patel built on Fishkin’s tenets in an article for Search Engine Land, exploring how brands can turn this information into conversions. Search queries can be categorized into three distinct buckets:

• Navigational Queries: When people want to be directed to another website 

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• Informational Queries: When people want to learn something

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• Transactional Queries: When people want to buy something 

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So, what do we do with this information? How can we turn this into conversions? Thinking about how users are searching is critical in developing keyword strategy. With knowledge of user’s search intent you can decide to optimize each page of your website differently. You might optimize your homepage for brand keywords for those navigational queries, you might optimize your content with long tail keywords for the more informational queries and if you’re selling a service you may want to optimize your product pages thinking about those transactional queries.

Now, stop procrastinating and get started on that keyword research!