What is User Intent? The Definitive Guide to Better Keyword Research

In pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, user intent is crucial. You can create and edit your campaign settings in seemingly innumerable ways, but all your efforts will count for little if you don’t have user intent in mind.

Read on to learn everything you need to know about user intent in advertising, including:

• What is User Intent?
• The main types of user intent.
• Which type of user intent you should focus on while choosing keywords?
• How to identify user intent?
• How to manage your dynamic search ads with user intent?
• How to identify user intent in voice search to choose the keywords for your campaigns?
• Google AI’s Relationship with user Intent.

 
Let’s dive in.

What Is User intent?

User intent is the logic and thought process behind search queries. People don’t choose specific keywords at random — the keywords they use relate to their needs and interests at that moment. How they search tells you a lot about what they want.

When you’re working on SEO and marketing, you should ask yourself: Why is this person searching for this specific keyword?

Chasing the answer to this question can improve your keyword research, which, in turn, will improve your PPC campaigns.

For example, when you open Google and type, “house painting,” you could be searching for several things:

• A company to come to paint his house.
• Instructions on how to paint a house.
• An artist’s painting of a house.
• A painting for his house.

 
Unless you know precisely what people mean when they use specific queries, it’s difficult to target them. You may target the wrong keywords, or offer irrelevant content and ad copy to the wrong audience.

What Are The Main Types of User Intent?

In Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs), we can identify four different categories for search queries:

1. Informational
2. Navigational
3. Commercial Investigation
4. Transactional

 
Your quest to understand user intent begins with figuring out the right category for each of your keywords. Let’s take a closer look.

Informational

Informational queries are those where people seek to gain knowledge. Quite often, these queries include question words, like why, when, how to, and where. Typically, these users aren’t in the market to buy anything.

So, why should you target informational keywords?

The buyer’s journey begins with the search for information, so many people likely have the same or similar questions. You can target this audience segment with high-quality content that explores topics in-depth, providing lots of information, and detailed answers to the fundamental questions people are asking.

As you generate more attention around this content, you can make an offer in exchange for their contact details. This strategy is “top-of-funnel” lead generation. Below, you can see the results for the keyword, how to plan a birthday party.

Among the top results are how-to guides, checklists, and tips, offering visitors valuable insights on this query. You can use PPC advertising to target this keyword, serving ads that may be of interest to people searching with informational user intent.

Here’s an example:

 

Navigational

Navigational queries are those where people want to find a specific website. As such, most people using these terms will already know the brand or business they want, so the only opportunity for brands is to rank for their own brand terms.

You should use navigational keywords in your PPC campaigns if you want to show your ads to people who display an interest in your products. For example, let’s consider the SERPs for the keyword, Shopify:

Several ecommerce websites are competing for the brand term, but most of the clicks will go to Shopify, as it is the most closely aligned to the navigational intent. If you have very relevant products and services for users, you can target navigational keywords to generate higher click rates and conversion rates.

Commercial Investigation

Prior to making a purchase, people do research, especially if it is a high-ticket item or long-term investment like a television, sofa, or car. In your PPC campaign, you can utilize commercial investigation keywords in several ways, including:

• Questions: “what’s the best washing machine?”
• Comparisons: “Adidas vs. Nike.”
• Other options: “HubSpot alternatives.”

 
In a similar way to whitepapers and comparison sheets, these keywords rely on middle- or bottom-of-the-funnel content to provide prospective new customers with in-depth information about your products and services.

For example, here are the SERPs for the keyword, best refrigerators:

As you can see, these ads target users who already have some intention of making a purchase. If people already know your brand, they will be easier to convert. This type of keyword may not drive a lot of impressions or page views, but they usually have the best conversion rate.

Transactional

Transactional queries are those where people wish to complete a specific action online, such as buying a product or service. You can see the commercial intent in this category, as keywords include transaction words, or else specific brand terms, for example:

• Buy Nike shoes
• Book flights
• Beats headphones

 
You can use transactional keywords in your PPC campaigns to target users that already have high-purchasing intent. Doing this is likely to drive a positive return on investment (ROI). However, you should expect fierce competition for keywords with transactional intent. For example, the keyword, buy jeans online:

You can see the top results have compelling offers that other companies will struggle to compete against, so you must target the right keywords to attract a very specific audience that will be interested in your products and services.

Which type of user intent should you focus on while choosing keywords?

When you’re choosing keywords, it may seem that you should focus your attention on transactional queries due to the likelihood of high ROI. Many ecommerce sites will focus on transactional user intent, and therefore, it makes sense to target those terms if you want to sell more products.

However, if your goals are to increase brand awareness, traffic, and page views, it won’t make sense to create content around sales-heavy terms. Instead, you should choose informational keywords, which will be cheaper and less competitive.

Ultimately, whatever your goals are, you shouldn’t rule out informational and navigational user intent. While content that targets these keywords may not lead to instant sales and revenue, they do play a vital role in nurturing your brand reputation and trust with prospects.

How to Identify User Intent

You can start looking at user intent during your campaign setup. Here are four ways you can employ to get a better understanding of what your audience wants.

1. Identifying User Intent Using the SERPs

You might not know the intent behind certain words or phrases, but Google does. So, by studying the SERPs, you can get a peek inside the minds of users. Let’s say you sell smart watches. Your customers may search for your products in one of the following ways:

• Compare different smart watches
• View images of smart watches
• Search where to buy a smart watch in the local area
• Find the best-selling or highest-rated smart watches
• Buy a smart watch online

 
The content of websites in the SERPs will differ depending on the user intent behind the search query.

When we consider the results for the keyword, smart watches, it’s clear that most users have strong commercial intent. This result indicates that most people who search for smart watches aren’t just looking for information or images, but they are actively looking to buy smart watches.

2. Identify User Intent with Organic Search Results

You don’t always need to look at paid ads to learn about user intent — the organic results are full of great insights too. Think about the following:

Search snippets

Put yourself in the content writer’s shoes, and then read each snippet and try to figure out what the title and description reveal about their intent. What was the objective of the writer? What problem are they solving? When you do this for 4-5 results, you can get a very distinct picture of the user intent for specific keywords.

Dig deeper into the content of the top-ranking pages

When someone interacts with the content in the top-ranked pages, what objectives can they solve? How does the content relate to their user intent? Is it informational, navigational, commercial, or transactional? Think about what stage the user may be in the customer journey when they view this content.

Take cues from the top results

Quite often, the pages at the top are those that are best aligned with the intent of a keyword. You can focus on those results to guide your keyword research and content creation.

3. Identify User Intent via Location and Mode of user

A user’s mode and location can impact the intent behind their queries. For instance, anyone that affixes ‘near me’ to the end of their keyword has local intent.
When you want to analyze mode and location, you can ask yourself questions to understand the semantics, for example:

• Is it conversational? g., find me the best pizza recipe.
• Is It a fully phrased question?g., Where is the nearest tailor shop?
• Does the meaning of the search query have an inherent local intent? g., shoe repairs near me.

 

4. How to Identify User Intent In Voice Search

Now that voice search is changing SEO, advertisers must think about how they can learn about user intent through voice search queries.

Create Answer-Oriented Keywords for Your Campaigns

Most voice searches are long-tail keywords with a very direct purpose, often in the form of a question. Therefore, you should create content that is answer-oriented. Structure your articles in a logical question-and-answer style format that builds information one layer at a time, providing a solid overview of the topic.

Use Long-Tail Keywords

As mentioned, long-tail keywords are the way to go on voice searches. So, you should try and select those for your ads and content as you’ll attract more targeted traffic.

How to Manage Your Dynamic Search Ads With User Intent

Dynamic search ads (DSAs) use content from your website to serve tailored ads to a defined segment of your target audience. You must know the user intent to maximize your reach. Here are a few broad suggestions to help you decipher user intent when using DSAs:

Think About What People Want to Know When Making Purchase Decisions

Consider possible searches that people will make when they are thinking about buying from your website. You should provide information pertinent to a sale and any links for specs, product comparisons, benefits, and of course, payment information.

Make Sure All Content Focuses on Valuable Information

The internet is too overcrowded and competitive for you to waste people’s time with fluff and repetition. Every line in your website must own its place, serving a purpose that drives people to action, moving them down your funnel towards the end goal – conversion.

Do Some Local Competitor Analysis

You can learn a lot from analyzing your competition. See what terms they target, what brand voice they use, and how they communicate information to prospects. Keep user intent in mind and search for ideas for your own content.

The Relationship Between User Intent and Google AI’s

In 2019 updates, Google released the BERT algorithm, which aims to make the search engine smarter at determining the context behind a user search query. This advance in artificial intelligence will change the way people search, and the results that they see.

BERT makes this possible by examining vast reams of ontological semantic information, assessing how words are classified, and what those words can mean to different users. With these deep data insights, Google can accurately predict what people actually mean, or what they want, even if their search phrase is somewhat inarticulate.

For example, if you use the main keyword “sailboats,” Google will consider latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords, such as  “wind speed,” “running downwind” and “trim your sails.”

In doing this, Google can identify the user intent of each article and then deliver the most accurate results for each specific user query. You can find out more about the power of BERT and how it will impact SEO in the future by reading our blog, Google BERT: Top Things You Must Know in 2020.

Wrap Up

User intent should not be an afterthought. If you want to deliver relevant ads to users and turn traffic into conversions, sales, and profits, then you must make user intent a top priority. Knowing your audience is critical in modern marketing, and so, you should get familiar with your ideal customers before picking your keywords.