SEO Audit Definions that Matter: About Search Intent

There are many aspects of websites that impact indexing and ranking. Most of the aspects are spatial while many are technical. Definitions of some of the audit practices follow here. Search engines are interested to know what user intents flourish on the browser window and how best they can retrieve information that makes the searcher completely satisfied. All along, search engines like Google with over 95% search are trying to perfect answers to user queries and maintain their share in the search market hence updates to algorithms are followed assiduously by webmasters. 

As search engines evolved a change in the technical nature of websites too has come into the picture. Technical SEO is part of online optimization and deals with site architecture, site speed, stability, and user-friendliness one of which is unavoidable is mobile friendliness. The other important component that Google highlights are Web Core Vitals. Thus, search intent is not only fulfilled by apt information but also by how it is delivered.

Online SEO and Technical SEO together combine to deliver a satisfactory user experience, and thus, the visitor's intent. To understand search or user intent we need to understand the backend mechanism, and that is what the above writeup elaborates.   

Search Intent   

Search Intent or user Intent is varied and vast. It is because indexing and ranking are robot or program driven that improvement in information retrieval can be improved by tweaking the core algorithms and filters associated with them.  These are known as updates that are a regular process, and as a result, we have seen quality change in Google information retrieval. In return for updates, Google wishes search engine webmasters to keep up to the mark to win over the SERPs and ranking within the ten blue lines. 

Google assumes that every searcher wants to solve a problem by entering a search in the search engine field. These types of search queries or user intent have been roughly divided into the following categories. 

Types of Search Intent:

• Informational Queries
• Transactional Queries
• Commercial Queries
• Navigational Queries
• Brand Queries
• News Queries
• Local Queries

User  Or Search Intent

User intent is a combination of appropriate keywords and the query. Search engines can make out the intent behind a user query. Thus, content on the page should be tantamount to and created such that it aligns with the user's query.

A website or a portal should be designed and developed such that it solves a user's query or several related queries. Thus web developers should be focused on the intent of their product right from the whiteboard stage. Most important is the content creation.

Are you focused on the intent the website is supposed to be based upon?

Will it answer specific user queries? 

If this focus is not their failure is evident.

Visitors will bounce out because the property does not answer any of their queries but rather confuse them. Intent thus is the base of all websites or portals. It could be broad like in the case of an eCommerce site or a gaming site or it could be well-focused on digital marketing belonging to a digital marketing agency.

You can create a site based on multiple topics but they should be related. For example, you can create a site on hot beverages highlighting cocoa, tea, and coffee but it will not solve the user intent unless the pages reside in a silo in a subdomain in a directory structure. The internal inking should be within pages belonging to the same topic and should avoid off-topic pages.

But most successful sites are those that are singularly focused on one topic and its relatives. If you observe a site and its site links as a successful property you will understand how closely the links are aligned to the topic.

Visitor Land on a Site with Intent

Visitors do not land on the site for bungee jumping. They arrive on a property for a purpose. If the search engine is perfectly able to solve the visitor's query or problem the search engine will find repeat visitors. This is how search engines compete by providing the right solution to the problem on the web browser's search column. At the moment there are three major search engines:

• Google
• Yahoo
• Bing

HOW Site Content Architecture Is Important?

As discussed above content creation is the most important aspect of site development. The home page should broadly define the portal's offerings,  and the internal pages should narrow down to specific but related topics. This is how links are connected under the umbrella-like structure.

The content should be perfectly aligned with the topic and major pages should be followed with one click. Secondary pages should be within two clicks while pages with in-depth focused knowledge should be found using the third click.

A website well made should have a sound architecture and should be focused on intent-specific content. It should be technically sound with all on-page elements in place. In short, a website should comprise all positive elements. When an agency in digital marketing designs a website for its clients it should be well focused. This blog entry elaborates on attributes that the digital agency should follow during development.