Search Intent
Search intent is the underlying purpose or goal behind a user's search query, what they actually want to find, learn, do, or buy when they type something into a search engine.
Search intent (also called user intent or query intent) is the reason someone performs a search. Understanding intent is arguably the most important concept in modern SEO because Google's entire algorithm is built around matching results to what searchers actually want. There are four main types of search intent.
Commercial investigation intent is when they're researching before a purchase ('best CRM software 2024'). Transactional intent is when they're ready to take action ('buy iPhone 15 Pro'). Matching your content to search intent is critical.
In practice
- A software company created feature pages for keywords like 'what is project management' (informational intent) and they never ranked, switching to educational blog posts matched intent and earned page 1 rankings
- An e-commerce site analyzed the top 10 results for their target keywords and discovered Google favored comparison articles over product pages, they created comparison content and ranked within weeks
- A B2B company segmented their keyword targets by intent: informational keywords for blog posts, commercial keywords for comparison pages, and transactional keywords for landing pages, each matched format drove 3x more traffic
- A financial advisor noticed 'how much do I need to retire' showed calculator results in Google, they built a retirement calculator instead of a blog post and captured featured snippet position
Not sure how this applies to you?
A senior engineer walks your site, your search presence and the way enquiries reach you, then writes down the three things worth fixing first. You keep the document either way.