Understanding the Impact of Intent

Intent defines a lot about where and how you should optimise content on a website. Many SEO’s overlook the importance of intent, but attracting traffic that lacks the intent to buy is going to be of limited value to a business.

Traditional search engine optimisation typically focusses on, or at leasts dreams of, achieving high level rankings in highly competitive search terms to draw in as much traffic as possible. However, often times a search term that attracts less traffic than another can produce a higher conversion rate. Why is this the case? This is because of intent. Often times the most traffic is attributed towards people looking for information, and often times they will focus on really generic terms. The more specific search terms generally bring in less traffic, but that traffic is of higher quality because they have shown a more clear intent to purchase an item.