This week we're going to chat about how Google is giving us insight through their search results, their suggested searches, and their related searches into the intent that searchers have when they perform their query and how if we're smart enough and we look closely and study well, we can actually get SEO and content opportunities out of this analysis. So the way I thought I'd run this Whiteboard Friday is a little bit different than usual. This is a different type of result, or it's serving a different searcher intent. Intent A: I want to buy furniture Intent B: I am looking to touch up or repair my furniture Intent C: Show me how to do it myself If you see more A's ranking near the top, not in the advertising results, because those don't need a very high click-through rate in order to exist. Intent A: They are trying to sell you ecommerce design Intent B: I am looking for successful e-commerce design inspiration/ideas 30 Beautiful and Creative E-commerce Website Designs, this is also from Shopify, because they just took my advice, well, okay, obviously they took my advice long before this Whiteboard Friday. If you're trying to serve intent A, you better advertise, because ranking in the top results here is just not going to happen. So, up at the top, Google is showing us ads. When I see this up here, my guess is always it's going to be 20% plus of searchers are going to the image results rather than the organic search results, and ranking here is often way easier than ranking here. Don't do SEO on your site, or fine, do it on your site, but also do it on Pinterest and also do it on YouTube. Have a bunch of examples in a short video that shows all the stuff that you're creating and then upload that to YouTube.
When Google isn’t quite sure what a searcher means just by their search query, the results (appropriately) cater to multiple possible meanings. Those SERPs, if we examine them carefully, are full of useful information. In this episode of Whiteboard Friday, Rand offers some real-world examples of what we can glean just by skimming the kinds of things Google decides are relevant.
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Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we’re going to chat about how Google is giving us insight through their search results, their suggested searches, and their related searches into the intent that searchers have when they perform their query and how if we’re smart enough and we look closely and study well, we can actually get SEO and content opportunities out of this analysis.
So the way I thought I’d run this Whiteboard Friday is a little bit different than usual. Rather than being purely prescriptive, I thought I’d try and illustrate some actual results. I’ve pared them down a bit and removed the descriptions and taken some out, but to try and show the process of that.
Query 1: Damaged furniture
So here’s a query for damaged furniture. If I am trying to reach searchers for this query — let’s assume that I’m in the furniture business — I might see here that there are some ads up at the top, like this one from Wayfair, inexpensive furniture up to 70% off. I scroll through the organic results — Everyday Clearance Furniture Outlet, MyBobs.com, okay, that’s a local place here in Seattle, Seattle Furniture Repairs and Touchups. Okay, this is interesting. This is a different type of result, or it’s serving a different searcher intent. This is, “We will repair your furniture,” not, “We will sell you cheap, damaged furniture,” which these two are. Then How Stuff Works, which is saying, “We will show you how to repair wooden furniture.”
Now I scroll down even further and I get to the related searches — scratch and dent furniture near me, which suggests one of the intents absolutely behind this query is what Wayfair and My Bob’s are serving, which is cheap furniture, inexpensive furniture that’s been previously damaged in some way. Clearance Furniture Outlet, similar intent, Bob’s Discount Furniture Pit, I’m not totally sure about the pit naming convention, and then there are some queries that are similar to these other ones.
So here’s what’s happening. When you see search results like this, what you should pay close attention to is the intent to position ratio. Let’s say…
Intent A: I want to buy furniture
Intent B: I am looking to touch up or repair my furniture
Intent C: Show me how to do it myself
If you see more A’s ranking near the top, not in the advertising results, because those don’t need a very high click-through rate in order to exist. They can be at 1% or 2% and still do fine here. But if you see these higher up here, that is an indication that a higher percent of Google searchers are preferring or looking for this A intent stuff. You can apply this to any search that you look at.
Thus, if you are doing SEO or creating content to try and target a query, but the content you’re creating or the purpose you’re trying to serve is in the lower ranked stuff, you might be trapped in a world where you can’t rise any higher. Position four, maybe position three is the best you’re going to do because Google is always going to be serving the different intent, the intent that more of the searchers for this query are seeking out.
What’s also nice about this is if you perform this and you see a single intent being served throughout and a single intent in the related searches, you can guess that it’s probably going to be very difficult to change the searcher intent or to serve an entirely different searcher intent with that same query. You might need to look at different ones.
Query 2: E-commerce site design
All right. Next up, e-commerce site design. So an ad up here, again, from Shopify. This one is “Our e-commerce solution just works.” They’re trying to sell something. I’m going to go with they’re trying to sell you…
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