Keyword Search Intent for Ecommerce
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What is Keyword Search Intent and Why Should You Care?
The internet is a pretty incredible place. With just a few taps of your fingers, you can find a tasty recipe for dinner tonight, a birthday gift for your nephew, detailed instructions for repairing the kitchen sink, and the name of that one song you can't get out of your head.
These are all examples of search intent, also known as user intent — the purpose of any given online search.
Depending on what exactly you're searching for, different search engines may be better suited to your needs. For instance, YouTube is a great choice when searching for visual information, such as tutorials or music videos. Amazon, on the other hand, is designed to drive conversions and is a popular go-to for online shopping.
And of course we can't forget Google, which encompasses all kinds of search intents. It's important to note that Google's algorithm is always evolving to better meet user search intent. The way users respond to content in the search engine results pages (SERPs) can have a strong influence on the future ranking of that content.
For ecommerce operators, the importance of understanding keyword search intent cannot be overstated. By knowing why users are searching for products and other keywords related to your brand, you can create content that is better suited to those search intents and drive more targeted, high-converting traffic to your online store.
Google Rewards a Helpful Content-Driven SEO Strategy
Satisfying user intent is Google's ultimate goal. Every time a user searches for a given keyword or phrase, Google wants to deliver the most relevant, highest quality content at the very top of that SERP.
The teams at Google invest substantial time, effort, and money into developing algorithms that help the search engine automatically interpret a search intent. Similarly, they reward content that successfully satisfies that intent with higher rankings and more prominent placements (such as rich snippets).
So, how do you ensure that your content meets the mark? The most proven practice is to create high quality content that takes the latest Google algorithm updates into consideration. While this list is always evolving, here are a few important ones you should keep in mind.
E-A-T
E-A-T is an acronym that stands for expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. These three factors are associated with a Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines update that first rolled out in 2018, then again in 2019 and 2021. In short, Google uses these factors to determine whether or not a site is high quality. It applies to all sites that fall under the category of YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) — in other words, websites that have the ability to impact a user's health, happiness, or wealth.
Anti-SPAM
In October 2022, Google announced a new update targeted at fighting spam. This is an ongoing priority for Google, and while not much has changed since previous updates, it's always good to be aware of the latest anti-spam guidelines. Websites that engage in practices deemed as "spam" risk losing their rankings or even being de-indexed from the SERPs. These practices include black hat SEO techniques like cloaking, link spam, hidden texts and links, machine-generated traffic, keyword stuffing, and sneaky redirects, among others.
Helpful Content
Google's latest helpful content update rolled out in August 2022. It focuses on delivering more informational results and rewarding people-first content. Generally speaking, this means making your website's area of expertise very clear, and then creating content that exists within that area of expertise (rather than chasing high-volume keywords for the sake of gaining traffic, even when they aren't relevant to your specific website). It also means publishing content that sufficiently answers users' questions by providing substantial, relevant, high-quality information.
What is Intent Targeting?
Different websites will fulfill certain user intents better than others. For example, a retail site like Walmart is targeted towards users who already have a decent amount of product and brand awareness and are looking to make a purchase. So, it typically won't provide much informational content. Company blogs, on the other hand, often fulfill those informational needs very well.
There are four main categories of user search intents:
Informational Intent
Navigational Intent
Commercial Intent
Transactional Intent
Informational Intent
Informational intent is one of the most common users intents, and is exactly what it sounds like: the user is searching for information. This is often done because they want to learn more about a given topic — for instance, the age of a celebrity or the history of a city. Informational searches may be formatted as a full question, but are often as simple as a single target keyword or phrase, such as "easter 2023" or "sanding cabinets."
Common Informational Intent Searches
Who
What
When
Why
How To Tutorials
Product Guide
Navigational Intent
Navigational search intent is when a user is trying to navigate to a specific location. This could be a physical location such as a store or restaurant in their local area, or it may be a website or specific URL. For instance, a user might enter "whitecap seo" in the search bar rather than typing in "whitecapseo.com." It's up to Google to infer search intent and provide relevant information that will help the user navigate to that given website or other location, such as an address, URL, or business hours.
Common Navigational Intent Searches
Brand Name Search
Locations Near City
Where
Product or Service Near Me
Url.com
Business Hours of Operation
Driving directions to business
Brand Name App
Commercial Intent
Commercial search intent refers to when a user is searching for information about a brand, product, or service to help them make a purchase decision. They're not merely looking for information, but they aren't quite ready to buy yet, either. Commercial investigation searches often incorporate terms such as "best" or "vs," indicating that the user is seeking information to help them compare two or more brands. Searches for product reviews would also fall under this category.
Common Commercial Intent Searches
Top products of 2022
Best widget for use-case
Brand 1 vs Brand 2
All Products in Category Compared
Brand Product Reviewed
Transactional Intent
Transactional intent is when a user is looking to take an action of some kind. In the context of ecommerce and retail, this is usually making a purchase. Often this will come in the form of keyword phrases such as "chocolate gift basket delivery" or "buy iphone 14 pro." However, transactional search intent keywords can also relate to other actions such as signing up to an email list, downloading a file, or joining an organization.
Common Transactional Intent Searches
Buy product
Cheap widgets online
Brand Product for Sale
Sign Up for Event
Register to Take an Action
Product Insurance Quote
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How Intent-Driven Keywords are Useful for Ecommerce Sites
So, how is any of this relevant for your ecommerce website?
You already know how important it is to create content that utilizes target keywords. But by knowing why users are searching for those keywords, you can 1) tailor that content to better fulfill search intent, 2) earn points with Google for satisfying search intent, and 3) attract more users at key stages of the buyer's journey.
In the days of old, plugging in relevant keywords was often all it took to rank. But with the latest algorithm updates, Google is increasingly delivering results based on the actions it thinks a visitor will take.
For example, when someone searches for "sneakers," it's up to Google to identify search intent. Is the user looking for information about the best sneakers to buy (commercial intent), are they actively looking to buy sneakers in that moment (transactional intent), do they want to locate sneaker stores in their area (navigational intent), or do they want the history of sneakers (informational intent)?
Using intent-driven keywords can help you (and Google) deliver the most relevant possible results to users. We'll dive into this more in the following sections.
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Keyword Intent Funnel Strategy
Now more than ever before, it is important to understand that a user's journey through the sales funnel is not as simple as delivering ads or getting visitors to a page. The best performing sites are creating content for user intent more so than for search engines. You might call this search intent optimization.
Keyword Intent Funnel Strategy
More likely than not, your ecommerce site receives visits from users at all stages of the buyer's journey. You can appeal to these various users by optimizing your content to match their different search intents, as well as by prioritizing content that leads to the highest conversions. For ecommerce brands, these will often be transactional intent searches.
Focus on High Search Intent Keywords
High-intent search signals are the most commonly attributed terms associated with a specific intent. For example, searches that include the phrase "how to" are very strongly associated with informational intent. On the other hand, the word "best" is often indicative of commercial intent keywords.
Inclusion of these kinds of search signals can make a world of difference. "How to ice skate" and "best ice skates" indicate very different stages of the user journey through the sales funnel. If you are a retailer that sells ice skates, creating informational blog posts about ice skating can be useful for building brand awareness and authority — but there is a good chance those users are not quite ready to make a purchase.
Whichever type of search intent you are targeting, using exact-match high-intent keywords in your body content, headings, titles, tags, and URLs is a good way to signal the given intent of the page to Google.
How to Know if Your Site Needs a Keyword Search Intent Overhaul
At this point, you may be realizing that your ecommerce site isn't optimizing content for search intent as well as it could be. Or perhaps you aren't sure whether it's in need of more keyword intent-driven optimizations or not. Below are some pointers to help you realize if and when your site is in need of a search intent overhaul.
Google Provides All the Tools You Need
The first thing to know is that Google has provided webmasters with all the tools they need to tackle search engine optimization with user intent in mind. That's not to say it will be quick or easy, but it also doesn't have to be overly complicated.
Using tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console, you can look for pages with high bounce rates, low conversion rates, and low page views. These metrics can indicate either that a given page is not appealing to users on the SERPs, or that it's not satisfying their search intent once they do land on the page.
There are other tools that can provide assistance with this task, but they often require a steep learning curve, time, and financial resources to master.
Fix High Bounce Rates in Google Universal Analytics
When people like what they see on your website, they stick around longer and engage with more of your content — it's as simple as that. This can be captured in metrics such as bounce rate. When users click a URL on the SERP and realize it doesn't have the type of information they're looking for, they aren't going to waste time clicking around the site. In this sense, failure to satisfy search intent can be a cause of high bounce rate.
Use Google Analytics Universal Analytics Organic channel metrics to see which of your website's pages have the highest bounce rates. Make it a priority to review these pages and see if you can infer the average user's intent when they choose to click each URL. Are they looking for information, to make a purchase, or something else? Optimize that page's content to better match the inferred search intent.
Find Low Click-Thru Rate Search Terms in Google Search Console
Similarly, low click-through rate can be an indicator that your site content is not sufficiently optimized for search intent and is not appealing to users on the SERPs. You can browse your click-through rates by navigating through Google Search Console Performance > Search Results > Toggle Top Queries.
From here, take a look at those terms that indicate high search intent. This will give you a good starting point for optimizing your site content for user intent.
Use the Google Search Engine to Match the SERP
Ultimately, the best way to improve your click-through rate for any given page is by improving that page's ranking on the SERPs. Once you know which terms are under-performing, type each of your top queries into Google search and analyze the SERP to see how you can improve.
Analyze Organic Competitors
What are the top pages on the SERP doing for the keywords you are researching? How are their titles written? How is the content organized on the top ten pages? Does this match the overall intent of your page? If yes, you can use these competing pages as inspiration for optimizing your own pages with unique, high-quality content. If not, you may need to rethink whether that's truly the term you want to be optimizing your page for.
Grab that Snippet
Is there a featured snippet? Which page owns it? Can you figure out why the snippet was allocated to that page? If so, you can try to emulate those attributes on your own page.
This is an endeavor that is well worth the time and effort! Nothing tells Google that your page is exactly what the visitor wants more than owning the featured snippet. Earning this coveted position can make a URL that would otherwise barely hit the first page appear above the top results.
Be Mindful of Zero-Click Searches
Searches that provide the user with an immediate answer without having to click onto a page may or may not be worth pursuing. If a user can get everything they need from the SERP itself, why would they bother clicking through to your site? Be wary of spending time optimizing your content for these kinds of searches.
Whitecap SEO Helps You Improve Your Ecommerce Site for Search Intent
If all of this sounds like a lot of work...you're right! Keyword research, SERP analysis, auditing site pages, and creating optimized content are all tasks that require a substantial investment of time and effort.
That said, you don't have to go about it alone. The ecommerce SEO experts at Whitecap are skilled at developing unique strategies for ecommerce sites, including optimizing for search intent.
Interested in having us do the hard work for you? Contact Whitecap SEO today to learn more.