SEO Is Answering User Intent

Lars Hindsley article on SEO

What is modern SEO? It is quite simply, providing the information users mean to find. SEO is answering user intent. So if you are in a business meeting, interview, or just wondering what the real answer to conquering SEO is, it’s always been about user intent. But today search engine Google has made it more obvious than ever with Google’s core update, May 22, 2022.  With the advent of schema along with voice search and local SEO — SEO is suddenly a playground that’s no longer for kids.

To be specific, user intent is straight up the name of the game. Search engines such as Google now openly indicate through SaaS tools such as Semrush four types of search intent which are informational, commercial, transactional, and navigational. Information makes up the largest search type, followed by both commercial and transactional. Navigational is by the far the least searched.  The names are self-explanatory except for maybe one. What is a navigational search? It is a search for a specific web page such as a search for a company’s support page.


Targeting A Search Query Is A Creative Science

To some extent, this helps keep anyone creating SEO on track, but only in a managerial sense. The person creating the content has the real task of providing an answer in a way that best fulfills the searcher’s need. Still, you can provide the best, most detailed information and Google doesn’t necessarily reward you with the number one spot. Wouldn’t it be nice? No, this is where all the minutia gets in the way and despite truly giving a user answers to their most desired questions, other on-page factors and technical SEO creativity are the answer. That’s why I get the big bucks.

Some Technical SEO

One question I’ve often asked is, what do inbound or backlinks matter to a user in regards to search intent? They don’t. Not as the first line of concern, but if all things were equal between competing pages for the same information, Google uses this to factor who ranks higher. I had an employer who wanted me to solely focus on this task months into a pre-planned SEO campaign. I could not reach them in discerning between the two. Still, I had a mandate. Off I went to work on backlinks. I learned a few things along the way. One, google knows what an unnatural link from link farm is.  You may not know when you purchase your backlinks in bulk, but Google’s algo reads the pattern of links from those URLs, and once known as a spam farm, you best disavow any link from them. Semrush helps there along with Google Search Console. Then there are artificial links. Don’t link from keywords, and hope any outside source kind enough to backlink to you isn’t linking from them either. Google’s search algorithm will interpret this as a non-genuine effort and mark it as spam.  There’s also the simple pattern of quick link growth. That’s another pattern that is clear to see. What’s the answer? A slow bell curve starting with a couple a month.  What’s the answer to all these concerns? Damn good content. It will earn the backlink you want. Period.

Semantic Search Confusion

Look. I’ll be honest. There are secrets in SEO. Some are open secrets. Others are simply so obvious that people in the business debate if they are true.

You can say that SEO starts with understanding user intent and understanding of the brand, but it also starts with having a strategy to execute your plan. From a keyword map to conversion campaign metrics, it’s one wild ride that few are completely rounded in. Maybe it just comes naturally to some. To me, if you have someone at the top who understands all of these components and has gotten their hands dirty in each area, you have a great chance at complete success. And yet, SEO has changed with search engines such as Google now diving SEO into local and broad search making industry each for SEO Specialists like myself. And within each industry are new tools popping up all the time.  And yet, local or broad search, you still have to keep your ear to the ground for the next big SEO evolution. If you think voice search is it, you are already behind.

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