What is commercial research?
Commercial searches are similar to transactional searches in that they ultimately lead to a purchase. These searches are intended to gather information to help you make the best possible purchase.
- Best selling smartphone
- What is the best airline to fly to New York?
- How to choose the right bike?
How do I optimize my content for commercial search intent?
In this specific case, the Internet user is looking for information on a product with a view to purchasing it . They will therefore be interested in content such as comparisons, testimonials, opinions, case studies, etc.
- Use an appropriate article title. As with informational research, the title you choose for your article is extremely important. We want to quickly understand that this is commercial content, so include words like: ranking, comparison, best, top 10, test, etc. in your page title.
- Create internal links to your transactional content. The ultimate goal of your content is to lead to a sale, so create links to your products. Be careful to do this naturally so that the user doesn’t get the impression that your content is intended to manipulate them.
- Guide your viewers through the next steps in the sale. Again, your goal is to (subtly) encourage viewers to buy, so make it easy for them and tell them how. This will also allow you to add transactional language to your content.
Why is search intent important in SEO?
Now that we’ve explained how to optimize your content for different types of search intent, here’s a quick refresher on how Google works and the impact of search intent on SEO.
What is the purpose of Google?
Understanding Google’s goal is always helpful when discussing search intent. The engine’s goal is to deliver content that best addresses the user’s initial search query so they can quickly find answers to their questions.
Specifically, regarding search intent, Google’s goal is to guess the question you have in mind, without you having to type all the subtleties into the search bar. This is why this concept is so important in SEO. If Google is able to understand this intent, it will offer appropriate results.
For example, when an Internet user searches for “Montreal activities”, the algorithm is able to know that the most successful results are those which present a certain number of tourist activities.
How does Google guess the search intent of Internet users?
With over 80,000 searches per second , Google has a huge database and all the technological means to analyze it in order to identify trends. The search engine therefore regularly conducts tests, offers different types of results based on the queries made and analyzes user behavior to determine whether the proposed results are suitable for them.
- Did people click on a result or did they immediately search again?
- If the user clicked on a result, did they stay on the page in question or did they return to the search engine to find another result?
- What search result did he click on? Maps, video, news?
- If the user repeated a search, how did they refine their search?
All these questions can be answered by analyzing search data. This is what allows Google to deliver the best possible results.
If we take the example proposed earlier “Montreal activities”, several search intentions are possible. Here are two examples:
- the internet user lives in Montreal and is looking for activities to do in Montreal to keep busy
- the Internet user lives in Montreal and is looking to visit Montreal
- the user lives outside Montreal and is planning a stay in Montreal
When a search can lead to multiple search intents, Google will offer answers tailored to as many search intents as possible by highlighting searches that have “historically” been the most successful.
In the previous example, the first results show activities to do in the old port of Montreal, others events, others tourist activities, etc.