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The secret to any successful SEO strategy is knowing how people, particularly prospective clients search the internet. In this post, we shall discuss three main ways in which online users search the internet. This will assist you to understand the searcher’s intent behind the various types of keywords and target prospective clients with relevant and useful content on your site.

Navigational queries

These are search queries intended to visit a particular page or website. Here, the search is actively searching for a particular thing that they know it exists.

Here are some examples of navigational searches:

Informational queries

This is a search query for a person who is looking for an answer. Mostly, informational queries are searched at either a highly specific or broad level, and the users don’t have a specific source in their minds.

Examples of informational queries include:

  • Best 49” TVs
  • SEO tips
  • How to create a website
  • Best body workouts to build muscle
  • Homemade remedies for a cold
  • How old is Queen Elizabeth?

What you will realize is that most search engines will directly answer these questions. However, not all informational questions and answers are straight forward. Complex questions will give you a link to websites that provide these answers—and, this is mostly a combination of a partial answer from the informational resource and the search engine.

Transactional/commercial queries

The searcher’s intent behind these queries is to buy. At times, the intent can be a bit loose, or the start of a journey towards making a purchase, or it can be more urgent.

Here are a few examples of transactional/commercial queries:

  • Gas BBQ
  • Best gas BBQ 2020
  • BBQ gas vs. coal gas
  • Emergency locksmith
  • Plumbing services

One thing you will notice with this kind of search queries is that they don’t have a clear intent, and search for “plumbing services” could be a search for information about different services offered by a plumber. However, the search query is still connected to the prospect of hiring plumbing services, which means it might be the first step in the journey towards hiring the services.

A search query, like “the price of plumbing services,” is a bit further along the journey of purchasing, and also has a serious intent to buy behind it. This kind of search query can be suitable for a highly targeted PPC advert or a well places organic listing for that service.

Go, Know, and Do queries

Google categorizes the above queries as Go, Know, and Do. Although it can be a challenge to come by the exact figures, here is a general rule of these queries:

  • Go (navigational queries) – they comprise 10% of the search volume
  • Do (transactional queries) – they comprise 10% of the search volume
  • Know (informational queries) – they comprise 80% of the search volume

As you can see, 80% of the search volume is informational queries, but most businesses tend to concentrate on the 10% of transactional queries. Putting some emphasis on the informational queries can assist you to position your businesses in front of your prospective customers. This assists them to start with a search for information, and then progress slowly towards a commercial intent.

Making your business visible here creates brand credibility, exposure, and gives you the potential to target users who have special offers. Most smart digital marketers can also connect these visits and views with remarketing, as well as other tactics to boost their return on the first exposure.

Understanding search intent

As we said earlier, understanding the methods in which prospective customers search for your services and products is an essential part of any SEO strategy. More so, how your prospective customers search around the issues that your services or product solves.

Now, with this knowledge, you have a good way of structuring your content and the design of your site to identify the full range of the search terms used by your prospective customers.