Intent based search results – effects on SEO

Today the emphasis of SEO has shifted from search engine pleasing activities. The focus today of SEO is directed towards the web visitor. The activities logically must be aimed to attract the web user’s attention rather than attracting the robots. Our SEO activities must revolve around the and study of the web visitors search habits, their intent when they search i.e. whether they want to search for information or whether they are searching for buy the products.

Google analytics provide us with the insight and we can actually convert the analytics results into the table turning SEO theme, so that our optimization efforts are more user friendly alongside being search engine robots friendly.

What does a transactional search query mean? Search engine analytics tell us the users have conducted transactional search queries. This means that the numbers of users have arrived on our website through the search engines and they actually wanted to buy. They would have used the keywords or search words like price, deals, discounts and similar words and phrases. These are the people who have arrived at their buying decision and are just hunting for deals or price reduction if any that are available. If your website succeeds in conquering their buying position you can bag the customer

Instructional search query is the query is the query of the first step. Here the buyer wants to go through the learning curve. He wants to see the tutorial, or read a how to article. If he comes across your web content and find it interesting, he would definitely spend some time before moving on to the other site for more information.

People interested in reading reviews and comparing prices do the investigative search. These website visitors would have gone through their initial search and learnt the basics.

Search engine analytics results tell us about the intent of the web visitors and hence we can learn their search patterns and build our SEO strategy, thus focusing more on the web users rather than the search engine BOTs.

Intent Based Search Results

We have been told time and again that the SEO is changing its colors. Ranking for the keywords is going to become difficult and we would see some high ranking site disappear soon. Google has time and again been telling us that they have built the search engine to help the web visitors to find what they are searching for and not the businessmen who want to show off their products, services and the information, which the web users are forced to see now. Google had been building the algorithm to display the results most needed and most suited for the web user’s intent. With the happier web users, Google will be merrier.

Google search results will display different search results. That means the BOTs will have to work harder and think more humanly. That is why artificially intelligent BOTs will be the focal point at the search giant’s labs. Things have started to change. There is much discussion about the intent based search results. There is a lot of hunger in the SEO arena for the information on the algo changes and how it would be possible for the SEO specialists to rank their websites and the client’s websites on the top of the search results.

Isn’t it time that long tail ends would take more weight as these would be closer to the web user’s intent.

SEO has now become more sophisticated. The SEO professionals need to put more of their intelligence, more thought and more time into their SEO strategies. Instead of thinking in terms of BOTs, it time to think in terms of humans. What would the web user think and what words would he use to conduct a search on Google. What are the terms he would use? Difficult to think for others, but that is how the search engines would be working. Search engine optimization, hence has become more challenging.