Understanding User Intent: How to Craft Content That Aligns With User Needs and Drives Conversion

Intro

User intent is the epicenter of online search.

It doesn’t matter what industry you belong to or the kind of business you do. As long as you want to dominate the search engine result pages (SERP) and engage with your target audiences, you need to understand the ins and outs of user intent.

As a company that’s analyzed multiple search results on SERPs and has done a fair bit of research about delivering on user intent and how to identify what user intent looks like, we believe we know a little “something-something” about this topic.

So, dig into this article to hear our thoughts on different types of user intent and how to understand/find user intent to boost your SEO strategies.

Types of user intent

According to most sources, search intent is of four different intent types, namely:

• Informational: Informational intent refers to when customers surf the web to get answers to specific queries. The informational queries they look up would ideally be true for all. That’s to say, it won’t differ based on the location/other aspects of the target audience. For example, informational searches could include “How to do Vlookup in Excel” or “How to fix a leaking sink.”
• Navigational: Navigational intent refers to searching for answers about a specific brand or from a specific brand. For example, search queries here can be “Case Study by Brand-Name Publication” or “Brand Name Wellness Retreat.”
• Commercial: Commercial intent refers to the intention of wanting to potentially buy something and is usually accompanied by keywords like “Best,” “Top,” and “Affordable.” For example, consider search terms like “Affordable Health Insurance in XYZ Location” or “Top Phone Providers in 2024.”
• Transactional: Transactional intent refers to definitely wanting to buy an item. For example, a search query for transactional intent could be, “Buy Ben & Jerry’s Half Baked Icrecream in Bulk.”

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Having said that, there are other types of search intent as well, such as comparative intent (e.g., wanting to compare software providers), location-based intent (e.g., grocery prices in specific states), and DIY intent (e.g., step-by-step tutorials for everyday use cases).

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However, some of the intents mentioned here can be combined with those mentioned above — for example, DIY intent and information intent can be one and the same when searching for things like “Jollof Rice Recipe.”

How do we understand user intent?

Let’s dive into the seven different ways to understand and harvest user intent to drive conversions in 2024.

1. Use free resources like Also Asked

One of the best ways to understand user intent is to use the “People Also Asked” section with questions surrounding your keywords or leverage free tools like Also Asked.

For example, if you’re writing an article about “Top Pixi Cosmetics,” you can just add the keyword to the Also Asked tool, and it’ll show you questions people are asking about the topic.

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If a user is on your site with informational intent, capitalizing on all queries will allow your article to become a one-stop destination for all their questions. This is the perfect content strategy. Otherwise, they’ll bounce from your site to retype other questions on the search engine.

**Pro tip: **Don’t underestimate the power of Google Analytics and Google Search Console as free resources to understand user behavior and drive future target keywords.

2. Tap into conversations of customer-facing teams

Another way to understand user intent to create relevant content is to ask your customer-facing teams or a customer service virtual assistant (e.g., customer support, sales, and marketing teams) about the questions, complaints, and queries your current and potential customers often have.

For example, if you find that customers want more product information, you can satisfy commercial intent by expanding your product descriptions and adding more information about the features, benefits, and pricing you offer.

Side Note: You can use tools like Describely for free to fill out sparse product information items in your product catalog. Descriptive product information helps speed up the ​​purchase decision.

3. Leverage social media listening tools

Tools like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and Keyhole are popular for their social media monitoring and listening capabilities.

By leveraging these, you can find brand mentions, conversations happening around your company, trending topics in your industry, competitor performance, etc., at scale.

With this data, it becomes easy to analyze what customers want to hear from your brand and what topics are currently trending that you can leverage, which eventually allows you to deliver on user intent.

It’s also worth mentioning that your CRM tools might also have some similar insights that you can benefit from.

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4. Browse the sites your customers are on

Next up, to understand user intent, you can start using the sites your customers use. That’s to say, start going to the same subreddits, Facebook groups, and Slack channels where your customers are.

This will help you identify user intent, their common complaints, areas of interest, etc., but it’ll also help you analyze their tone and language. For example, they could have certain insider jokes applicable to the industry or use certain jargon while communicating.

You can also leverage these channels to:

• Create your own micro-communities of brand loyalists (e.g., consider the private Facebook group Curology created to connect with its loyal customers).
• Identify the voices of influence your customers listen to (these can‌ become your influencer partnerships).

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5. Do your own research

Another agenda on the list is to do your own research to identify user intent. Consider mapping the buyer’s journey and putting yourself in the customer’s shoes.

Ask yourself questions like:

• Is my website optimized for efficiency (e.g., consider loading speed and keyword optimization)?
• Do my customers find the information they need easily, or must they search for it?
• Is there anything on my website that might be causing an intent mismatch?
• Are there any hurdles on my site, either content or navigation-wise?
• What are the first and last stops in their journey?

Location is another important element for user intent. As you know, user intent is a user’s reason for looking up a specific term on a search engine. But to be able to identify it, you need context — especially when looking for ​​informational content.

For example, covering a topic like “Understanding How to Do Taxes” might get a little tricky, mainly because tax rules differ in each country/state. So, ensure your article title delivers on the intent. Try being more specific.

For example, instead of the keyword phrase “Understanding How to Do Taxes,” you can write “Understanding How to Do Taxes in San Diego.”

Similarly, topics surrounding medicine, law, housing, prices, cost of living, etc., differ from country to country and region to region. So, if you’re a real estate company operating in the United States and you want to create ads about your offerings, we recommend creating different headlines for ads in different regions.

For example, some headline considerations could be “Apartments for rent in San Diego,” “Apartments for rent in NYC,” “Apartments for rent in San Franciso,” and so on and so forth.

Doing so will allow you to deliver on the user’s intent based on where the user is located.

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6. Consider using heatmaps

Heatmaps are another life savior as they help you understand how users navigate your site and what topics they are browsing while on your website.

Alternatively, you can leverage other tools (e.g., FullSession) to track user sessions and help you understand how users interact with your content during each session.

With these insights, you can learn:

• Which topics aren’t garnering the attention of your customers
• What structure do customers like to consume content in
• Which topics convert well and which ones to focus on
• Which structure doesn’t work well for them
• More about customer behavior

Once you have your hands on this data, you can conduct A/B tests to optimize your website performance and increase conversation rates.

7. Have a conversation with your peers

Lastly, another way to understand user intent is to interact, converse, and network with industry peers in your niche. You can meet these peers either online (e.g., webinars) or offline (e.g., industry-wide networking meetings).

Alternatively, you can also pay for consultation calls to get insights from your peers.

This won’t only help you understand user intent but will also help you analyze it from different perspectives. Moreover, once you tap into your industry network, you also get to build lifelong relationships with them (which can eventually turn into honest friendships).

Such a network isn’t only helpful for answering all your doubts, but it’s also excellent at providing a sense of community.

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Identify user intent and stay on top SERP spots with Ranktracker

Alright, and that wraps up our list of different types of user intent and how to identify user intent to improve the user experience. And while we hope you found this article helpful, these tips aren’t the only helpful resource we want to share with you today.

Suppose you’ve identified user intent through the abovementioned ways. The next item on the list is to optimize for user intent to rank on the top of the SERPs for specific search queries. And if you’re doing that, you need to be strategic with your efforts to be able to rank properly.

This means you need to:

• Have a search engine optimization (SEO) checklist on hand
• Monitor search results for your keywords
• Track your rankings and backlinks
• Find trending keywords
• Audit web results

These are all activities Ranktracker can help you out with! Are you ready to take your digital marketing initiatives to the next level? Learn more about our product offerings today.