Why Do User Intent & Search Relevance Matter So Much for SEO?

Last Updated on April 19, 2024

When planning new content for your site, understanding user intent and search relevance is something that is so often ignored yet can be invaluable.

In this post, I will explain to you why user intent and search relevance are vital to consider when planning content if you want to achieve superior results to your competitors.

(Please note this post may contain affiliate links. I may earn a commission if you click them and make a purchase. I only recommend products that I have tried).

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What Is ‘User Intent’ in Search Results and SEO

In order to try and provide us with the best possible results, Google has algorithms that analyse what we look for when we do a search.

In other words, Google tries to understand what we are trying to do when we search for a specific term.

• If you search for the term ‘Liverpool Football’, are you trying to view their recent match results, buy match tickets or something else?
• Or, if you search for ‘Sicilian food’, are you attempting to learn how to make it, find somewhere to buy it, learn about the origins of Sicilian food or to achieve something else?

So, Google analyses all of the actions that we do as web searches. The result of this is that they understand the typical user intent for each search term.

Okay. So why should you care? I do not blame you for asking this question!

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Why Does User Intent for Search Matter so Much for SEO

So imagine this:

• Think about all the time you spend planning content, writing it and putting it live on your site. If you knew of a way that you could make your content much more relevant to what Google want and achieve much better search positions, wouldn’t you jump at the chance?!

Let me be clear before proceeding though, there are a number of factors that get you to the top of the search results.

These factors include the number of inbound links to your page and site, your authority, size of the post, retention rate (time people spend reading your post without leaving the page), and so on. (You can learn about all of these factors in the SEO Gold Dust Course).

Much has changed in the last few years as Google has got smarter in understanding how we search online for things.

Understanding how to see how Google uses ‘User Intent’ in how they provide search results, means that you will be able to write content in a way that is much more closely aligned with user intent. By doing this, you will greatly increase the chance you have of higher search results!

Without understanding user intent, you will be unlikely to get high search positions that matter.

Confused. Do not worry. 

It will become much clearer if I talk you through some examples, so let’s get started!

How to Check ‘User Intent’ by Analysing the Search Result and Examples

So imagine you do a Google search for the term ‘lemon tea’.

Lemon tea! What on earth does that have to do with user intent I hear you ask! It will soon become clear.

What we can immediately see in the search results, is already quite revealing.

On the top are sponsored ads. Users pay Google (using Adwords) and so this is more about who is willing to pay to be shown in these ad spots.

So, this does not tell us much about user intent yet.

This is, in fact, a mistake that Sharon Gourlay makes because she includes the paid sponsored ads in talking about the top 10 ranking posts.

On the right side of the top of the search results page though, Google, for a search of ‘Lemon tea’, has chosen to give information on how to make lemon tea! (See the image below).

This is very significant because Google is giving you a huge clue as to what they have discovered.

They are telling us that the search intent for ‘lemon tea’ tends to be people searching for information on how to make lemon tea.

Google also tells us that people also search for the types of lemon tea, i.e for honey in tea, lemongrass tea, and lime tea.

Also near to the top of the search results page, Google list what “People also ask” for. These results give you a very clear idea of the user intent.

The four results can be split into 3 categories i.e. i) benefits/health ii) making it and iii) the best versions.

In fact, if you only check one thing regards user intent, just check the “People ask for” box and this alone is a great guide.

And then we have the Organic Search Results on the page, as you will see below.

And this is where it gets really interesting!

Organic Search Results and User Intent

By natural search results, this means results that are not paid for. They usually come below the paid ads that sit on top of the page.

In the graphic above, you can see where I have explained in red lettering, next to each listing, the user intent type, that each is about.

The top 10 results can be put into 3 categories on this one set of search results for the term “lemon tea”. These are:

• Recipes and how to make lemon tea.
• The health benefits of lemon tea.
• Retail and selling lemon tea.

So it is really very clear that Google has decided (from analyzing masses of data) that the most appropriate results to provide searchers with when they search by the term ‘lemon tea’, is to give them one of 3 things, namely recipes, information on the health benefits or somewhere to buy lemon tea.

Apart from the 3 categories of user intent, no other results to do with lemon tea are given on the 1st page of Google results!

So take note! If you want to rank on page 1 of the Google search results for the term ‘lemon tea’, you will want to write content that fits into one of the three user intent categories we have just mentioned! Got it?!

One final thing. At the bottom of the search results, Google also provides “searches related to” the term you have searched by.

These results also give you a massive clue to what Google expects to see you write about, if you want and hope to rank on page one of the search results for a term.

Above, once again, the user intent for this term is clear. Recipes and how to make tea and health-related issues such as weight loss and the advantages and disadvantages of drinking this tea are what Google says users expect and want to see in the search results for this term.

Content Strategy and Using User Intent

So what is the point of this post and all of these examples above?

What does it mean in real terms for you as a blogger and business owner online?

ACTION: Every time you write a new blog post for your site, spend just 3 minutes and analyzing the user intent, for the term you are targeting in the post you are writing.

If you find that the article you were planning to write does not match the user intent, then consider adapting the article slightly.

Note: If you want to rank for very specific long-tail terms then you might want to just go ahead and write about something very specific.

If you, on the other hand, want to rank for key terms that are  1- 3 words, then looking at user intent can certainly help you better shape your article, to match what Google considers to be important.

Paul Symonds

How Relevancy Is Important for User Intent SEO

What Google does, when they search your site, is to analyze your content and a number of different metrics and how relevant your content is. This will be matched against what they see as user intent.

The relevance of your site/page + user intent for search term = Chances of ranking high for that term

So, how relevant is your content if you are adding a new blog post? Think carefully about relevancy if you ever want your content to rank high in search results.

There are of course many considerations when it comes to SEO and I cover this in our SEO training, but for now, at least do think about relevancy and user intent!