SEO and User Intent: Content Strategy For The Modern Search Journey

SEO is changing - in fact the modern SEO journey in many ways looks nothing like it did five or ten years ago and probably won’t look the same in another five years - as SEOs we are constantly adapting to new innovations and new approaches but one thing fundamentally always stays the same - Google fundamentally is designed to answer a user’s question - and as SEOs our job is to create an experience that matches that user intent, answers that question and provides the user with exactly what they are looking for - that never changes.

But that doesn’t mean that the way we approach it can’t change - and in the last few years user intent has become a hot topic in SEO circles as we start to gain a better understanding of Natural Language Processing and how Google actually understands the content that we are producing. 

As Google’s algorithms continue to improve, so does the need for us as SEOs to improve the way that we present content and back it up with key E-E-A-T signals. As Google betters its understanding of semantics and themes, it’s never been important for us to match user intent to deliver better SEO results. 

So How Do We Understand And Match User Intent?

In order to be able to match user intent and build an effective content strategy off the back of it, first we need to understand what the user is looking for and to do this we need to go back to basics:

• What are the topics and themes that surround the service/product or information that you are trying to give? What types of questions is the user asking to try and find information - this gives good insight into what their intent might be and try to semantically link your content, there’s a good guide to semantics here - they play a key role in helping Google to establish what your website is about
  
• Why is the user coming to your website in the first place - do they want a service, do they need expertise, do they want a review, do they want to understand first hand experience - qualify why the user is coming in the first place
  
• What style of intent are we talking about? Is it:
  
  • Navigational: The user wants to reach a particular website or webpage.
  • Transactional: The user is ready to make a purchase or perform an action.
  • Commercial: The user is researching products or services with the intent to buy but hasn’t made a decision yet.
  • Informational: The user is looking for information, answers, or instructions. They want to learn about a specific topic.
    

Once we’ve established the above and also worked out in what format we want to start matching that intent, that’s when we can start building out content that effectively answers the key questions. 

Finding The Right Content Type

Intent doesn’t just lie in the information contained within the content, but also in the way that the content is presented. In order to match intent we need to ensure that we’re presenting content in the format that best meets the needs of the user. There’s a number of ways that we can do this but considerations include:

Experience Vs Expertise 

Google explains very succinctly in the Quality Rater Guidelines the importance of defining the two. In its example it looks at how you would approach content for wanting to sleep during pregnancy - in some cases you would need expertise (medical advice) but in some case you might just want the experience of someone who has been there and done it (successfully!) - the difference between the two can play a key role in matching user intent

Three C’s Of Intent

In general there are three key things that you need to think about when choosing the right presentation for your website - content type, content format and content angle. Content type can be anything from a blog post to a video to a product page, content format refers to the structure of that type i.e. opinion piece, list post, review style content and then content angle can be the approach you take for that piece - consider carefully which of these best suit your audience. 

By taking some time to review what “type” of content your audience wants, you can help to style your content in a way to match the user intent effectively. 

Tackling An Evolving User Intent

As with anything - user intent can change and we’ve seen this across a number of SERP results over the last year. Let’s take the “payday loans” SERP result as an example:

Over the last year we can see that there have been substantial changes in the top 10 search results, most notably 15 changes across the top 10 positions. It looks something like this:

What we can see here is substantial change - most of the positions that were ranking are now outside the top 10 with entirely new websites starting to rank, all in the space of the year. 

There are a number of tools that we can use to evaluate user intent but if we use Ahrefs “Identify Intents” tool, we can see that over time the common themes and user intent of top performing sites has changed:

What does this mean? It means that we need to stay relevant - user intent doesn’t stay the same forever so ensure that you’re keeping an eye on what’s trending and the SERPs - you may need to make adjustments or iterations to your content to ensure you’re still matching that intent. 

Defining User Purpose And Backing It Up With E-E-A-T

Regardless of industry, when we’re creating a content strategy that matches user intent we will often find that the user wants the information we provide backed up by something tangible - and in most instances this aligns closely with the principles of Experience - Expertise - Authority and Trust (E-E-A-T) which also align well with SEO performance. 

In order for a user to feel confident in a particular product or service the user wants to know why the provider is an expert in that field, why they have the authority and that they can have trust in the product/service. They likely also want supplementary content which showcases that, either through external reputation and thought leadership, on-site reviews or on-site content like FAQs which answer questions they might be looking to ask.

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Building E-E-A-T into your content strategy not only helps to match user intent, but it also helps to push Conversion Rate as you are actively adding elements to your website which make the user more likely to convert - as a result your content strategy is doing more than just answering user’s questions, it’s actively pushing them to engage with your product or service.  

Combine This To Build An Effective Content Strategy

All of the elements above play a key role in crafting an effective content strategy for your website - but with the modern search journey involving even more competition and touchpoints than before, it’s critical that at every stage we are matching the user’s intent and purpose to ensure we don’t lose them out of the funnel and that we nurture the leads as we go.

So in summary, a modern content strategy should include:

• Evaluation of user intent, what they are looking for and adapting your content approach and written content to match this - understanding why a user is coming to your website in the first place
  
  
• Finding the right content type for your user - ensuring that the style of content you are creating matches their needs and the format they are looking for - as well as understanding whether it’s “expertise” or “experience” led content that appeals to them directly
  
  
• Staying ahead of evolving user intent - keeping on top of when it might change and adapting your approach to keep this in mind
  
  
• Backing it up with E-E-A-T - ensuring that your content showcase key E-E-A-T signals which not only help to back up and reassure users that what you’re saying is valuable and correct, it can also help to promote conversion rate optimisation. 

By combining each of these elements within your content strategy you are developing an effective content strategy for the modern search journey.