Search Intent: The Concept Most Content Gets Wrong
Matching intent matters more than matching keywords. Here is how to read it correctly.
Content & On-Page
The four types
Informational wants to learn. Navigational wants a specific site. Commercial wants to compare before buying. Transactional wants to buy now. Ranking for a keyword means matching what the searcher expects to find, not merely containing the phrase.
How to read intent accurately
Look at what currently ranks in the top five. If they are all comparison articles, Google has decided that query is commercial and your product page will not rank regardless of optimisation. The SERP is the answer.
The most common failure
Targeting a transactional page at an informational query, or writing a blog post for a query where every result is a product page. Both fail because the content type is wrong, not because the content is bad.
Key takeaways
- The current SERP tells you the intent; read it before writing
- Wrong content type fails regardless of content quality
- Commercial queries need comparison content, not product pages
- Match what the searcher expects to find, not just the phrase
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