Whether you’re a web designer, marketing manager, or business owner, you probably have some understanding of “search intent” on Google. When we talk about search intent, we’re establishing the ultimate goal of the person using the search engine. There are many different types of goals, but the most popular are: to go somewhere, to know something, to do something or to not pay for something. Essentially, search intent is what outcome the person is looking for from the search.
It’s important to have a good understanding of search intent when you use websites regularly. By establishing and utilizing search intent, you can increase the visibility of your website and promote your brand.
Your page
If your page is getting impressions but not clicks, this may be because you need to match the intent of your visitor – i.e. understanding what they are searching for and then changing your page to address it. It’s no good having a webpage that knows its audience but doesn’t answer their questions. Visitors will become frustrated and will go elsewhere.
This is all about keywording. For example, if 400 visitors wanted to find the “cost” of a product on your page and another 600 wanted to find the “pricing”, then the search intent is clearly popular in establishing financial information. Congrats, you know what people are looking for!
What next?
Now that this has been established, you need to work out what to do with the information. You have two options:
- update your current page with the relevant financial information; or
- create a new page with the relevant financial information.
But how do you know which option is best?
Your best option here is to go to Google results, Google a keyword, and find the results. By comparing other results to your own website, you can see what others have done to optimize their search results. If there are many pages that are optimized specifically for this keyword, then you should probably make a new page. If not, then you may be able to update your current page. You might want to do both.
Getting to this stage takes time. You need to establish all your keywords and compare the intent, demands, clicks, and impressions. Work out what is worth writing more information about, and what isn’t, depending on how other pages have performed.
After doing this, it’s worth seeing how other pages have presented their financial information. Have they used checklists? Articles? Spreadsheets? Graphs? Once you know exactly what your visitors are looking for, you can consider how they want the information to be conveyed, and what the most effective format is. You want your page to be easy to navigate, with the information presented clearly and succinctly.
FAQ schema
FAQ schema plugin by Online Marketing Gurus can be a useful tool in optimizing search intent and gaining visibility. It allows your SERP to get a collapsible menu, where visitors click on the question to reveal the answer, like this:
Image from developers.google.com
There are certain things to be aware of when using the FAQ schema. Information should be in a question and answer format where users can only submit answers to a single question. FAQ schema doesn’t work for blog posts or essays that answer questions, or pages where there are multiple questions and answers on each page. This is why it collaborates well with search intent because you need to have a clear understanding of the questions that your visitors have.
It’s a nifty tool that could help your page to relay information and get clicks, and you could get on featured snippets or voice search if you use it correctly. Google has the tools to help you perform – so make sure you’re using them.
