What Is User Intent, Why Is It Important, And How Do I Identify It?

You’ve successfully conducted keyword research and want to put your keywords to good use. To create content or pages with a shot at top rankings, you’ll need to identify, understand, and satisfy the so-called user intent of each keyword. Today, you’ll learn what the user intent is, why it plays a crucial role in SEO, and how to identify and satisfy it.

Why Is User Intent Crucial for SEO?

What Is User Intent in SEO?

How to Identify User Intent

How to Satisfy User Intent

This article will focus on the role user intent plays for SEO. In SEO, it is your job to

1. Identify why a user uses a specific keyword.
2. Know what kind of search results users expect for said keyword.

Additionally, identifying user intent helps you find out

• What kind of overarching challenges users might face based on their search
• How you can help users overcome those challenges to help them choose your product or service instead of your competitors.

Why Is User Intent Crucial for SEO?

Identifying and fulfilling user intent will significantly boost your SEO success, help you understand your target audience, and increase sales.

Behind each search and thus each keyword lies a unique intent. Therefore, identifying a keyword’s user intent is a crucial step in content creation and marketing as a whole. As SEO specialists or online marketers, we need to know what the user intent is for two reasons:

1. It Boosts Your Rankings

Among other things, search engines list search results based on what they consider match the user’s intentions and expectations best. After all, for search engines, a happy user is a happy customer who will most likely keep using the search engine that provides the best answers for them. That is why search engines favor pages/content addressing the user intent and usually reward them with better rankings.

2. It boosts traffic and conversions

Addressing the user intent is your key to attracting and convincing (prospective) customers. After all, it’s real-life humans who will buy your products or services, search engines are just a means to an end. In other words, catering to the user and their intent will drive conversions and increase sales.

What Is User Intent in SEO?

Why do people use search engines? Because they want to know something, solve a problem, be entertained, buy a product, find their way, or book a service. This “why” is the user intent, the reason why someone uses a search engine and types in a search term (keyword).

That means that behind every single search lies a unique user intent. For example, if someone searches for dog beds, they usually want a dog bed for their pooch and are looking to buy. If someone types in “what type of bed is best for older dogs,” they want information first and will probably buy later.

Primary and Secondary User Intent

As you might already have guessed from the second example, you’ll often find that there’s an overarching primary intent behind a single search. For instance, if someone wants to get a new puppy, they might search for

• The perfect breed for families
• Whether to adopt or buy from a breeder
• Checklists
• Items to buy
• Product- or place reviews
• Dog training guides or coaches
• Vaccinations, checkups, insurances
• Veterinarians or dog parks near them
• And so on

In this example, every search is a piece of a bigger puzzle, of an overarching primary intent (getting or caring for a puppy). Still, every search follows a secondary intent that triggers very different search results.

As you can see, users often conduct several searches to solve their challenges or intent. Knowing that and thinking about what questions/challenges users might want to address surrounding your topic will help you:

• Cover more keywords
• Create more content
• Deliver content that picks up on just the right pressure points
• Increase your presence throughout the customer journey
• Develop and sell more products/services
• Increase authority for search engines
• Increase trust in your brand and brand awareness

How to Identify User Intent Or: What Users Expect in Search Results

Let’s stick with our primary intent of getting a pup. As listed above, many challenges lie ahead for the future dog owner, each of them a secondary intent to put our primary puzzle together.

Think about the list above. What kind of search results might users expect? It’s pretty easy, really: users expect search results that match their intent. For example, they might be looking to buy, get information, or go/navigate somewhere. That’s why in SEO, keywords are usually classified into the following categories of user intent:

How to Satisfy User Intent?

Think about what may have triggered someone to use it for every keyword you want to be found for (aka. rank for). Now you know what user intent is, what categories are out there and what users might expect. Use this information to create content that matches expectations and satisfies the user’s intent.

Here are a few quick-and-easy steps to follow:

1. Check your keyword against the table above to know which category it falls into to get a general idea of its user intent.
2. Double-check by googling your keyword. Do search results match the identified category?
3. Look at the first page of search results and the results themselves (open the page). What type of content are you dealing with? Look at covered topics, media types, structure, style, speech, length, and so forth. Is there something missing you could provide? 
4. Find, include, and answer user questions about your topic. In XOVI NOW, go to Keyword Research, type in your keyword, and check out the Questions tab.

Use your insights to create content that’s at least as good as the content you find on the search result’s first page. Think about what they might be missing you could add.

For example, other ranking product pages may be missing a good video of the product in action, how easy it is to use, and how it makes people's lives better. Or maybe you find that important questions are not addressed.

However, make sure that you stick to the same type of content; if your keyword is transactional and search results are product pages, users want to buy that product, not read this product’s history in a blog post.