google tries to show the most relevant
results for any given query but what
happens if people want different things
i mean if someone searches for apple do
they want this
this
or
this hi
i'm apple
this is called fractured or mixed intent
or according to google's quality rater
guidelines quarries with multiple
meanings and they actually show an
example of how they would handle this
query and that's through dominant common
and minor interpretations
but it's not always this easy and seeing
as search intent is one of the most
important things in seo to get right
you need to know how to handle mixed or
fractured serps because if you can't
match one of the intents then you're not
going to rank so in this tutorial i'm
going to show you how to interpret
intent for serps even when it might seem
completely random stay tuned
[Music]
so if you're not familiar with search
intent it represents the reason behind a
searcher's query and finding search
intent is usually done by looking at the
top ranking pages for a target query for
example when someone searches for crock
pot recipes it's quite clear that they
want to see pages that include lists of
slow cooker recipes and we know this
because all the top ranking pages for
this query are doing that
search intent is clear so if we want it
to compete it's just a matter of
following suit now if we search for just
crockpot you'll see that intent is mixed
i mean do people want to go to the
manufacturer's website buy a crockpot
online go and visit a store nearby or
get a list of slow cooker recipes more
importantly can you rank for this query
and if so what type of page should you
create now in order to come to an
educated decision we need to talk about
the types of search intent that seos
generally look for and these are usually
categorized in four buckets
informational navigational commercial
investigation and transactional
so informational queries are ones where
people are looking for information they
want to learn so crockpot recipes what
is seo etc would generally be considered
informational and pretty much any site
can rank for these through articles as
for navigational queries these are ones
where someone is looking for a specific
website or place to go for example
google analytics login amazon garden
hose or mexican restaurant near me
now for the most part you probably won't
go after navigational queries that
aren't about your brand because even if
you do rank for that keyword you
probably won't get much traffic from it
for example the query bank of america
login gets around 1.6 million monthly
searches in the us
and if we go to the traffic share by
pages report in ahrefs keywords explorer
you'll see that the first page gets the
majority of traffic the second to their
mobile app gets a tiny fraction of it
and then the result in position three
gets virtually no search traffic from
this query and that's because no one
else can serve this intent other than
the bank of america
now if we look at the traffic share by
pages report for another navigational
query like bank of america routing
number you'll see that wise.com gets a
decent amount of traffic from this
keyword and that's likely because intent
doesn't need to be served from the bank
in fact wise has created tons of pages
around bank routing numbers which leads
to hundreds of thousands of monthly
search visits now commercial
investigation queries are ones where the
searcher is likely in the market for a
product or service but has yet to make a
final decision so think of your typical
best of affiliate posts reviews and
comparisons
searchers are basically weighing out
their options but have yet to make a
more specific decision
and these queries are fair game if you
have products or services to sell or if
you run an affiliate site and finally
are transactional queries which are
queries that show that a searcher is
looking to purchase something specific
for example buy optimum nutrition
protein powder and these queries are
usually reserved for websites that sell
that product or service
now these intent buckets are far from
perfect and one of many problems is that
serps often can't be categorized in one
bucket meaning there are multiple
intents just as google had said
in reality a single serp can have pages
that serve all four intents
so to get a better idea of dominant
intent you need to get the full scope of
the serp and there are three main things
you need to include in your analysis the
first and probably most important are
the organic blue link search results
plain and simple you want to look at the
top ranking pages for your target query
and ideally you'll want to analyze the
serp from a location where you hope to
rank in addition you'll want to sign out
of your google account and use private
or incognito mode to remove any
personalization factors you can do this
using a vpn with ahrefs seo toolbar
or if you're doing local seo and need to
start from a specific city town or even
zip code you can search for a keyword
from a target location using ahrefs rank
tracker now once you have the search
results in front of you you'll want to
look at the top pages and look for the
intent they're trying to serve so are
they trying to teach you something is a
common brand showing up do they want to
sell you something or do they want to
give you education on a product now
while you can infer much of this from
the titles and descriptions you should
actually visit the pages and look at the
so-called content intent of each ranking
page and by content intent i'm referring
to the intent the page is trying to
serve not the serp for example if we
look at the serp for car loan you'd
probably think from the titles and urls
that all of these pages are lead gen
landing pages
and if you click on the first result
you'll see that that's true but if you
click on the result from bank rate their
content is actually less transactional
and looks more commercial and
informational as you can see from the
pricing table and their table of
contents
all right so let's put this into action
and look at the serp for the query
keyword research where intent is
fractured and i just want to note that
i'll only be looking at the organic blue
link results for this assessment
so we have some blog posts that are
showing informational intent like these
how-to guides
then we have these landing pages that
are free keyword research tools so in my
opinion the intent for this serp is
informational and commercial the former
being dominant all right let's move on
to the second thing you should look at
and that's serp features
serve features are anything that appear
in google search results other than the
organic blue link pages so that includes
local packs knowledge panels people also
ask ads and i'll stop listing them out
because there are a ton of them and this
list is far from exhaustive
now serve features actually help to
paint a clear picture of how google sees
user intent for example if you look at
the search results for the query raleigh
seo you'd probably think that it's a
commercial and transactional query
because nearly all of the top ranking
pages are home pages and landing pages
from seo agencies who sell seo services
now if we look at the full serp you'll
see that there are a ton of ads that are
trying to do the same thing as the
organic results further confirming
transactional intent but there's also a
knowledge panel for the company rally
seo company meaning this could also be a
partial navigational query because while
the majority of people are likely
looking for an seo company in raleigh
north carolina to work with some might
actually be looking for the entity
rally seo company and as you can see
they rank in pole position for the
quarry too
so let's look back at our list of serp
features and categorize how they give us
clues about intent and the key word here
is clues because again you need to take
multiple things into account also serve
features can fit into multiple buckets
for example featured snippets can appear
for both informational and commercial
investigation queries like what are
primary colors and best golf clubs
so here's a list of how i think start
features map to intent take a screenshot
and let's move on to the third thing to
analyze and that's serp stability versus
volatility stability or volatility
within the serp can tell us a bit about
search intent for example if the top
ranking pages are jumping in and out of
the top 100 then search intent may not
be clear
now on the other hand if the top ranking
pages have been consistently ranking on
page one for an extended period of time
then it tells us that intent is likely
clear
for example if we look at the last 12
months of position data for the quarry
how to make chicken soup you'll see that
the top six pages have consistently held
their top ranking position and the
little bits of movements are just signs
of healthy competition now if we look at
the position history graph for the
quarry play you'll see that different
pages have been popping in and out of
the top ten the serp is volatile and
just look at the variants and pages that
are ranking there's google's play store
their support page and twitter account a
few definitions of the word play
a stock ticker called play and
playstation's home page
based on just the urls alone intent is
dominantly navigational and it's
commonly informational
now it's not to say that you should only
target stable serps because they both
come with their pros and cons generally
speaking stable serps will be harder to
get a top ranking position at least for
competitive quarries but there's also a
level of predictability when trying to
rank for these queries it's basically
just a matter of content and links
whereas volatile serps can be faster to
rank in but there can be a lot of
uncertainty in terms of if you can rank
now it'd be all rainbows and butterflies
if we could accurately define strict
criteria and categorize them into one or
more intent buckets then we know exactly
how to approach page creation but the
truth about these intent buckets is that
the methodology is broken because a
they're like a million in one it depends
kind of serps
b syrups change meaning intent can
change too
c
serps are often different based on one's
location
and d which is probably the most
important is that people's
interpretation of intent will vary
to prove my point i asked josh head of
content at ahrefs and patrick our
resident technical seo to give me their
opinions on search intent for these
keywords
we all jotted down our answers
without peaking and here are the results
from this exercise
as you can see our interpretation of
intent on the whole was quite different
in fact the only keyword we had
identical answers for was ama a
navigational query
but one thing that stood out is that we
actually all chose the same dominant
intent for the queries
so i want to leave you with one key
takeaway instead of stressing out for
hours about overall intent or worse
wasting several man hours arguing with
your colleagues focus on creating
top-notch pages that match the dominant
intent of users and if you can't serve
that intent but really want to rank for
that topic then consider going after the
common intent or just let it go bottom
line don't over complicate things at
ahrefs we simplify this by using what we
call the three c's of search intent and
while it doesn't give us a bucket to
throw a query in it keeps us laser
focused on serving prospects our
existing customer base and we actually
rank our pages for meaningful topics we
have a full tutorial that goes into how
you can use this method in our free seo
course so i'll link that up in the
description now if you enjoyed this
tutorial then make sure to like share
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and marketing tutorials i'll see you in
the next one
