person holding black iPad

10 Secrets to Understanding User Search Intent

There are many secrets that help you understand user search intent. There are also many reasons why people pursue various things on the internet – problem-solving, entertainment, shopping, travelling, etc. To yield relevant results for their search, they use terms that act as signifiers of the main topic. Understanding the motives behind these expressions is important for drawing prospects through matching appellations in your online frameworks.

person holding black iPad

The 4 Kinds of User Intents

As is evident from the diagram below, there are four kinds of search intent, that correspond to the four stages of the marketing funnel:

  • Informational motives: An individual may be trying to find information about various things such as academic findings, history, know-how DIY knowledge etc. This is termed informational search intent.
  • Navigational Intentions: Seeking specific pages on the internet, such as social media sites or online stores, falls under navigational search intent.
  • Commercial Inquiry: Questions about prices, comparisons, or guides aimed at assisting the buyer in making a purchase define commercial search intent.
  • Transactional purposes: After a purchaser has made a selection of what they want to buy, they search for product pages or e-commerce sites to make a transaction. This signifies transactional search intent.

10 Steps You Can Take for a Holistic Comprehension of Audience Intent

To make better plans for promoting your presence and advertising your company online, follow these ten steps to interpret queries better:

  1. Scrutinise the query: Analyse phrases to get a good idea of what your target audience is looking for. Make a plan of what subjects you want to rank for, and then categorize them to conceptualize the context of the inquiry. For instance, if you are trying to sell garments online, you may find queries like “shift dresses”, “sustainable fashion”, “Nike trainers” etc. Use a good keyword tool to evaluate the competition and build up a content strategy for a high rank.
  1. Delve deeper into context: Use semantically related vocabulary in the article’s body to increase your chances of matching the vendee’s needs. Suppose your principal keyword is “cake”, so you should use coinages relevant to it, such as “cupcakes”, “birthday cakes”, “wedding cakes”, etc.

Understanding Latent Semantic Indexing


LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords, termed related expressions, provide a comprehensive industry perspective and aid in improved classification by web portals. Using LSI keywords is as important as adapting your material for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Use a dictionary, online tools, or artificial intelligence to list these linguistic forms.

  1. Check SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages): Examine SERPs for your selected query and explore the kind of substance ranking highly for it. If you find mostly product archives, this could be a transactional query, whereas if you find factual articles or instructional videos, it could be an informational query.
  1. Map the buyer journey: The intention behind a query can shift, e.g., once a user has finished researching a new Smartphone, they may decide to look for ways to buy it. Their interest in a specific feature may drive their purchase decision. Say, Rory wants a new Smartphone with more storage capacities, while Liam wants one with a better camera.

How Customers Continue To Forage Online

Customers continue to forage online throughout their decision-making process to get what they want. Their emotions, previous experiences, and product-related resource availability will also influence them. Map the journey to shape your narrative. Therefore, you must locate where the user is in their buying journey.

black smartphone near person
  1. Pay attention to modifiers: A keyword consists of a head, tail, and modifier, where the modifier is the changeable aspect. For example, “cheap repair shops in Glasgow” may change to “cheap repair shops in Manchester”. Like the location changes in this inquiry, brand names may change in other queries, and so on. Again, in “best Samsung tablets of 2023”, “best” and “of 2023” act as modifiers. That can change in a different search query. Integrating modifiers in your page will aid faster optimization and enhance visibility.

Investigate Themes To Understand User Intent

  1. Investigate themes: Evaluate long-tail keywords that can give you insights into customer requirements and pain points. Queries like “cheap gift shops in Edinburgh” could come up during festive periods. Keeping track of these demands allows you to provide timely solutions to your regulars.
  1. Create buyer-personas: Conduct studies through data, interviews, and surveys to form an impression of your ideal buyer. This will give you a clue about who is more likely to buy your commodities. Customize your content, communications, wares, and services to meet their expectations.

How Data Can Help You Understand User Intent

  1. Use data implications: Apart from checking search volume and competition for descriptors and using them in your subject, it is important to use web page analytics to help you decide what considerations are more popular among your audience. If your product listings are receiving a high bounce rate, consider adding detailed and optimized descriptions. This may encourage buyers to purchase. 
  1. Take an active role: Ensure active engagement with your audience through comments, feedback sections, and virtual communities on social media. Doing this gives you crucial viewpoints about your goods and how to improve them. Using awareness about how customers use your items contributes to a good content strategy.

Strategize your communication techniques through emails and newsletters to reach out to your prospects at opportune moments. You can send recent updates about your company or notify them of discounts and launches. Keep in mind that this content must align with their exploratory objectives and include compelling calls to action. Satisfying their needs can help you up-sell more commodities. This wins loyalty, stimulates discussions about your goods, and catalyses word-of-mouth promotions.

  1. Make continuous evaluations: Use previous performance reports to guide your new efforts. Invest in split testing to know more about consumer behaviors. A/B testing will base your judgments on quantitative evidence rather than intuition.

To make an everlasting impression on your prospects, you must make sure you are offering value in your presentations. Apart from using data and creating buyer personas, consulting your customer-facing employees also goes a long way in providing value. Connecting with your regulars gives your efforts a personal touch. This is something that may be lacking when you collect data through digital means. Gaining thorough knowledge of your clientele and incorporating it into your content can help you achieve more conversions.

person using MacBook pro