Searcher intent is becoming one of the most talked about topics in SEO, and it’s easy to see why with Google getting better at understanding intent and ranking sites it sees as aligned with that intent. Rory shares tips on identifying SERP intent at scale, automating the process of categorising keywords by intent and sharing advice on how you can optimise your pages to ensure they are clearly aligned with the intent Google favours.

1. Intent Optimisation
Why it Matters & How it Can
Improve Your SEO Results.

2. • Why does intent matter?
• How to analyse & optimise for intent
• Does it work?
Intent
Optimisation
AG E N DA

3. About Me
SEO Strategist
Ror y Truesdale
• 11 years in SEO, PR & Content Marketing
• SEO Strategist at Conductor
• EMEA SEO lead for WeWork
• Specialising in understanding search intent
@RoryT11

4. WHY DOES INTENT
MATTER?

5. Whitepaper
Peer reviewed academic papers
unveil insight into how a search
engine might classify intent:
“Classic IR […] is inherently
predicted on users searching
for information […] the need
behind a web search is often
not informational – it might
be navigational or
transactional […] global
search engines evolved to
deal with web-specific
needs.”

6. Google Quality Rater Guidelines
In the Quality Rater Guidelines,
Google specified 4 intents:
KNOW
The goal is to find an answer to a
question
DO
The goal is to download, to buy, to
obtain or to be entertained
SITE
The goal is to find a specific site or
page
VISIT
The goal is to visit-in-person a
business or organisation
KNOW DO
VISITSITE

7. IT’S TOO BROAD
The problem with this?

8. Look at the Model Proposed by Kane Jamison
Intent Classification Summary SERP Signals
Research Intent Searcher looking for more information
Featured snippet, people also ask results,
knowledge carousels
Answer Intent Searcher looking for a quick answer Scorecards, in-SERP calculators
Transactional Intent Searcher looking to buy a product Google shopping results
Local Intent Searcher looking for a local answer Map pack, map in knowledge panel
Visual Intent Searcher looking for visual inspiration Image pack
Video Intent Searcher looking for video content Video pack, video thumbnails
Fresh/News Intent Searcher looking for the latest news Top Stories in the SERP, Recent tweets
Branded Intent Searcher looking for a specific brand Large sitelinks, one site owning page 1
Split/Fractured Intent Searcher may have a number of ‘intents’ Mix of the above in one SERP
Source

9. SIGNIFICANTLY EASIER TO
CLASSIFY A SERP
Much better!

10. WHY WOULD THIS
BE USEFUL?
Hold on…

11. Coworking space London

12. SERPs show us the
intent Google favours
• 8 of the top 10 organic results are
‘research’ intent pages
• Lack of transactional pages tell us
what Google thinks user want to find
• Are we likely to get a transactional
page ranking?
Research
Research
Research
Research
Research
Research
Research
Research

13. Office space London

14. Notice how the
intent shifts?
• 100% of page one organic results
are transactional pages
• This is clearly the type of search we
need to target with a transactional
page
Transactional
Transactional
Transactional
Transactional
Transactional
Transactional
Transactional
Transactional
Transactional

15. • Every searcher has a specific intent when they use Google
• Google tries to surface results it thinks are relevant to that intent for specific queries
• Aligning landing pages to that intent can improve ranking performance
• It can also improve conversion and engagement performance for those pages
What does this mean?

16. How can we apply this to our SEO
campaigns?
What intent does
Google favour?
How are competitors
optimising for that
intent?
How can I better
optimise my pages for
intent & rank higher?

17. I want to help you
do this at scale

18. Analyse
SERP Features
Tactic 1

19. Use a tool that shows SERP features broken
down by keyword
AHREFs
You can also use:
SEMrush

20. Export this and start mapping SERP intent in
your vertical by keyword
There’s a great guide by Kevin Indig
to walk you through this:
https://www.kevin-indig.com/user-
intent-mapping-steroids/
Source

21. Understanding the language in
the SERPs can be an even more
powerful way of analysing intent
This is a good place to
start…but can we do more?

22. Use a Custom Search Engine
(CSE)
Tactic 2

23. Create a dedicated CSE
for each of your most
valuable keywords
- Set a CSE up at
cse.google.com
- Extract top 100 URLs for a
target keyword
- Use the SERP Redux
bookmarklet to extract the
URLs

24. In the Settings for Your CSE, Enter ONLY the
Pages Ranking for Your Target Keyword

25. What changes vs
the live SERPs?
• If your page ranks higher in the
CSE you might have a
technical/authority problem
• If your page ranks lower in a CSE,
you know you have to improve the
relevancy of that page
• In your CSE results look for
occurrences of words or phrases
that signify a specific intent
F i l t e r y o u r C S E r e s u l t s b y ‘ r e l e v a n c e ’

26. “office [KEYWORD]” AROUND(5) “rent [MODIFIER]”
Use this Advanced Search Operator in your CSE to identify how closely
a keyword and ‘intent modifier’ appear in competitor landing pages
In your subset of pages, this operator
looks for pages where the word ‘office’
appears within 5 words of the term ‘rent’

27. A Google patent entitled ‘Document ranking using word
relationships’ tells us why this analysis would be useful
Source
• Google can look at the
closeness of words on a page
to better understand how it
matches the query intent of a
search
• Proximity of words or phrases
that explicitly indicate the
intent the page satisfies
could be valuable to Google
as part of this process

28. • Look for competitor landing pages more closely aligning keyword and intent than
your landing page
• Are there patterns you spot between the query term and intent modifier proximity?
• If you notice this then aim to replicate that structure – it will more clearly signal to
search engines what types of query your page should be ranking for
What does this tell you?

29. USE A CUSTOM SERP
EXTRACTION
Tactic 3

30. Remember this
screenshot?
• Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to
analyse SERP-displayed titles and
descriptions at scale to help us
understand intent?
• We can with a custom SERP
extraction!
Trasactional
Transactional
Transactional
Transactional
Transactional
Transactional
Transactional
Transactional
Transactional

31. SERPs are web
pages with HTML
You can crawl and extract all
the content contained within
that page

32. WARNING! You might annoy John Mueller
I’ve written a guide about this tactic
and it made John Mueller mad:
https://www.searchenginejournal.co
m/scrape-google-serp-custom-
extractions/

33. All you need are
the ‘SERP URLs’ for
your keywords
Luckily this always follows
the same pattern
Keyword =
SEO Custom Extractions
Google SERP URL root =
https://www.google.com/search?q=
Crawlable SERP URL =
https://www.google.com/search?q=
SEO+custom+extractions

34. Here’s a tool that does it for you!
Access
the tool

35. How to use a custom SERP extraction
Upload your SERP URLs
as a list into Screaming
Frog

36. Set up a custom extraction using these XPaths (extract
only text):
Page Title: //*[@id="ires"]/ol/div[*]/h3
Description: //*[@id="ires"]/ol/div[*]/div/span
How to use a Custom SERP Extraction
Specify a Google search
URL for a keyword you
want to analyseTells Screaming Frog to
extract the page title and
meta description for each URL
No SF access? Use this bookmarklet to do the same thing manually for each keyword.

37. Shows results like this…

38. Export & analyse the results in a spreadsheet like this…

39. =IF(OR(NOT(ISERR(SEARCH(“best",C3))),NOT(ISERR(SEA
RCH("what",C3))),NOT(ISERR(SEARCH("who",C3))),NOT(I
SERR(SEARCH("when",C3))),NOT(ISERR(SEARCH("why",C
3))),NOT(ISERR(SEARCH("whose",C3))),NOT(ISERR(SEAR
CH("whether",C3))),NOT(ISERR(SEARCH(“how",C3))),NO
T(ISERR(SEARCH("tips",C3))))=TRUE,“Research",IF(OR(N
OT(ISERR(SEARCH("buy",C3))),NOT(ISERR(SEARCH("sale
",C3))),NOT(ISERR(SEARCH("let",C3))),NOT(ISERR(SEARC
H("rent",C3))),NOT(ISERR(SEARCH(“lease",C3))),NOT(ISE
RR(SEARCH("get",C3))))=TRUE,"Transactional","Intent
not found"))
Use this formula to assign an intent to
each extracted title and description
Remember – this is just a structure – you will need
to tweak the words in green to make them
relevant to your vertical
SERP URL Title P1 Intent P1 Title P2 Intent P2
Common
Intent
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q
=office+space+london
Office Space &
Desks to Rent in
London | Hubble
Transactional
Office Space &
Business Space To
Let & Rent In
London |
Workspace
Transactional Transactional
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q
=office+space+manchester
Office Space to
Rent in Manchester
- Gumtree
Transactional
Office Space,
Serviced Offices to
rent & let in
Manchester |
Bruntwood
Transactional Transactional
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q
=coworking+space+london
The 10 best
London coworking
spaces
Research
Coworking London -
a directory of co-
working spaces in
the british ...
Research Research
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q
=coworking+space+manchester
Overview of the 10
best co-working
spaces in
Manchester | EU ...
Research
15 Best Coworking
Spaces in
Manchester |
2018 Prices &
Reviews
Research Research

40. Use this formula to calculate the
most common intent in your SERP
SERP URL Title P1 Intent P1 Title P2 Intent P2
Common
Intent
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q
=office+space+london
Office Space &
Desks to Rent in
London | Hubble
Transactional
Office Space &
Business Space To
Let & Rent In
London |
Workspace
Transactional Transactional
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q
=office+space+manchester
Office Space to
Rent in Manchester
- Gumtree
Transactional
Office Space,
Serviced Offices to
rent & let in
Manchester |
Bruntwood
Transactional Transactional
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q
=coworking+space+london
The 10 best
London coworking
spaces
Research
Coworking London -
a directory of co-
working spaces in
the british ...
Research Research
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q
=coworking+space+manchester
Overview of the 10
best co-working
spaces in
Manchester | EU ...
Research
15 Best Coworking
Spaces in
Manchester |
2018 Prices &
Reviews
Research Research
=INDEX(C3:U3,MODE(MATCH(C3:U3,C3:U3,0)))

41. • It looks beyond SERP features and starts to analyse the language of the SERPs
• The language used in the SERP-displayed titles and descriptions can give more
accurate insight into SERP intent
• Use this to map your target keywords to an intent – then ensure your target
landing pages are optimised for that intent
What does this tell you?

42. ANALYSE THE SERP DISPLAYED
META DESCRIPTION
Tactic 4

43. The SERP displayed meta
description gives insight into
what Google thinks will trigger a
searcher to click through to a
result…

44. I used a Conductor Market Share report to get the
top 30 ranking meta descriptions for these keywords
Keyword
Summer dresses Beach dresses Holiday dresses Maxi dresses
Summer dress styles Beach dress styles Holiday dress styles Maxi dress styles
Summer dresses 2019 Beach dresses 2019 Holiday dresses 2019 Maxi dresses 2019
You might want to target those keywords to an ecommerce category page…but would that be
the best approach?
Need an alternative? Use
the Scraper Chrome
extension to get SERP
displayed meta
descriptions

45. For each keyword, take your SERP meta descriptions –
use the Cleanse Stopwords tool to remove stop words
Source

46. For each keyword paste your cleansed meta
description copy into this NGram Analyser tool
Source
Sound complicated?
All this does is counts
the co-occurrence of
words, or sequences
of words, in your
inputted text.

47. Let’s take a look at the results.

48. Look at the frequency of ‘transactional’ intent
keywords for ‘dress’ head terms
Keywords
Summer dresses
Beach Dresses
Holiday Dresses
Maxi Dresses

49. Notice how the trend changes to ‘research’ terms
when we add ‘styles’ or ‘2019’ to a query
Keywords
Summer dress
styles
Beach dress
styles
Holiday dress
styles
Maxi dress styles
Keywords
Summer dresses
2019
Beach dress
2019
Holiday dress
2019
Maxi dress 2019

50. • Deeper dive into analysing the language of the SERPs to accurately classify intent
and provide insight into what user’s actually want
• Provides a list of useful terms or features that you can incorporate into landing
page content and design to better align them with intent
• Not just for on page content – think about other ways to use these ‘hints’ to
improve the semantic relevance of a landing page
What does this tell you?
One more thing…

51. Google patent on phrased based indexing
provides valuable insight
“[…] a document with a low frequency of query terms but
a plurality of related phrases for the first phrase ranks
higher than a document with a higher frequency of query
terms but with no related phrases.”
Source
“[…] ranking the documents in the list based on a quantity
of related phrases determined for each document, so that
documents with more related phrases are ranked higher
than documents with fewer related phrases”

52. Why is this relevant?
Is there a way to scale up analysis to identify correlation between co-
occurrence, proximity and ranking position?
Does the co-occurrence of words or phrases in SERP-displayed meta
descriptions provide insight into what those ‘related phrases’ are?
That would be very cool!

53. DOES INTENT ANALYIS WORK?

54. We did this for one of our clients
and saw:
• Increase in visible MSV by 24,000 per
month
• Tracked keywords improved an avg. 27
positions
• Increased ranking position to at least
page 2 for 356 tracked keywords
• Just one category – great potential to
scale up
YEAH!

55. • The language in the SERPs can provide powerful insight into how Google is
interpreting user intent for a query
• Analysing this language can help you more accurately assign intent to a keyword
and help you understand how you can structure a page to optimise for intent
• This analysis can have value beyond intent – potentially helping you understand
‘user desire’ and identify ‘related phrases’ that Google might look for when
ranking a site for a query
What to take away

56. http://bit.ly/seo-intent-leeds
Get the slides!

57. Thanks for listening!