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Search engine optimization (SEO) focuses on creating and updating a website to increase its visibility for relevant search results and queries. One of the most important aspects of SEO is meeting user intent and understanding how meeting a customer’s user intent can drive success for your business.

What is user intent?

User intent is the goal and intentions of the user when they are entering a search term into a search engine. When a user performs an online search, the results and information they are looking for is their intent. User intent can be broken down into four types:

1. Informational: This type of intent is when users search for information about a specific topic or have specific questions that they need to be answered.
2. Commercial: This intent focuses on the user’s intention to buy or purchase, researching what they are looking for and for information about what they would like to buy. Commercial intent is focused on the intent for the near future.
3. Navigational: This intent is focused on people who want to visit a specific website.
4. Transactional: The fourth type of intent focuses on the user’s need or interest in buying something. This is similar to commercial intent, but transactional intent is focused on the intent now rather than in the near future.

4 Ways to Meet User Intent and Drive Better Results

Search engines strive to meet user intent and provide the best results for the user. Thus, it’s important to know how to capitalize on user intent and understand the ways that user intent can generate leads for your business. Here are four ways you can better meet user intent and improve your website:

1. Messaging and content should meet the user intent of specific types of users.

When creating pages for your site, your site should have both messaging and content that meets specific types of users, and their needs. To determine user intent, it’s recommended that you start looking at a topic’s current search engine results page (SERP) and start to understand how these results were generated. The SERP will give you a better understanding of competition and what types of content are currently meeting user intent. In addition, today, many people use voice search or phrase search queries in the form of questions and the current SERP generally displays the answers to these questions. By doing your research on current messaging and content, you are able to improve your own content and begin to map out what content is needed for your site.

2. Analyze your current site content and its performance to better meet user intent.

It’s also important to look at your current site content and its performance to see where you can better meet user intent. To see where you need to improve content, Google Search Console allows you to see what search queries and pages on your site are gaining impressions. While looking at the impressions and clicks for a page, you can determine whether or not your page is actually meeting user needs and where you can improve content to better suit user intent. Additionally, by segmenting search console data, you can see what people are searching for in relation to your industry and how this can be incorporated into your site content. Segmenting the data will allow you to see what information is relevant to your business as well as connect you to the types of people that may be interested in your content.

3. Build up current content and make your site relevant.

After analyzing your site’s current content and the content of others, this information can also be used to improve your existing content on your website. If your existing content has a high bounce rate and people are not spending a lot of time on certain pages, you can see where you should adjust and improve the content to better meet their needs. In terms of the pages that are performing well, these pages can be scaled and expanded upon to drive traffic to your website.

Furthermore, you can make your existing content more relevant by utilizing blogs and reviews. Blogs allow you to provide users with specific and educational information, making your site more relevant to user search queries and act as a source that users can revisit for future information. Creating content that matches user intent and expands upon it builds reliability and trust with users, allowing you to capitalize while building your content.

4. Improve your site’s user experience to generate leads and increase time on site.

Improving your site can translate into increased time on site and higher conversion rates. When it comes to meeting user expectations, it’s important to take a look at the user experience of the site, including meeting proper page structure and layout. Today, many people want quick, fast results and they tend to skim pages. Thus, by providing a site layout that gets them to the information without any distractions will satisfy their intent and foster a positive user experience on the site. This can be achieved through using subheadings, organized layouts and a flow of information that’s easy to follow. Proper layout can also allow bots crawling your site to understand your content and help your pages perform better.

Meeting User Intent Drives Better Results for Your Business

By focusing on user intent and creating content that meets user intent, not only will your site be more likely to rank over time, but it will also connect you to your desired audience. This will help create a better customer experience by providing users with answers to their search queries and giving them a potential service for their needs. As a result, this can drive high-quality leads to your business. By connecting your content to user intent, you are connecting your business to potential customers that are seeking exactly what they are looking for and what they need.