Search intent is another example of a term we use in the SEO industry all the time, assuming people know what we mean! And that’s an issue because it’s actually quite important. So, what is search intent, how does it relate to keywords, and how can knowing about it make you more money?

In SEO terminology “search intent” refers to what the user wants to achieve when they’re searching for a keyword in a search engine. The idea is that if you match search intent and give the user what they want, you’ll have better rankings and happier, higher-converting users. There are four broadly recognising keyword search intent categories: informational, navigational, commercial and transactional. Informational keywords are general fact-finding searches, often questions, where the user just wants more information. Navigational keywords are searches where the user knows where they want to go and are using Google to get there, e.g. when you search for “facebook” on Google to get to Facebook. Commercial keywords are queries people search for to compare specific products or services to each other, like “best SEO agency in Manchester”. Transactional keywords are high-intent keywords that people use when they are ready to make a purchase, e.g. “buy XYZ online”. We use search intent to inform the SEO content campaigns we run for our clients.

That’s what this post is about: the different types of search intent, how they translate into SEO search terms, how you can tell what search intent applies to a particular keyword, and how we use search intent to inform our content campaigns.

What are the different types of keywords?

Not all keywords are born equal! You have to pick and choose which ones you want each page on your site to rank for. Part of what you have to consider is the search volume, and part is the keyword difficulty, i.e., how difficult it will be to rank for.

But you also have to consider which broad “bucket” or category the keyword fits in so that your page content matches the search intent of the user. This is what it all comes down to: matching what the user is actually looking for. Does the user want to learn about something? Do they want to find something on a particular site? Do they want to compare products and prices? Or do they want to buy something, right now? That’s the basis of the most commonly accepted keyword categorisation: informational, navigational, commercial and transactional. Let’s look at each of these keyword intent types in turn.

Informational keywords

Informational keywords are what people use when they want to find something out. They’re often in the form of questions, like “what is a P9X tax code”, but they aren’t always; “P9X tax code” on its own would be an informational keyword too, because if you’re Googling that, it’s probably just to find out what a P9X tax code is. You might also call these “blog keywords”, because they are typically best placed on blogs, or if they’re a little more tightly relevant to a product or service, an FAQ on a landing page.

Informational keywords have seen huge changes to how they work in recent years. It became very, very common in the 2010s to see niche websites (think things about pets, health, etc.) built by amateurs who wanted to try and generate passive income with ads or affiliate links. For years there was huge competition over these informational keywords, which all else being equal, are the last ones you would want to optimise for if you’re trying to make money. But with generative AI and AI overviews, the landscape underwent a seismic shift; Google want to keep as many people doing informational searches within Google as possible (rather than actually going to someone else’s website). Plus, lots of people just ask questions of AI these days.

It’s still worth targeting informational keywords, though, because of topical authority. Topical authority is a subjective measure of how broadly and deeply, and with how much demonstrable expertise, a website covers any particular topic. In short, Google rewards sites with good topical authority, because searchers are happy when they find real experts rather than scams or people who don’t know what they’re talking about.

Navigational keywords

Navigational keywords are the keywords people use when they’re looking for a specific website, or specific information on a specific website.

If you’re lazy like me, you Google the keyword “reddit” rather than taking the time to type reddit.com. You then tap or click the first result — which will be the one you’re looking for — saving absolutely no time at all. But that’s the lazy mindset for you, and that’s a navigational search.

That’s a great example of a navigational keyword. You’re navigating through Google to find what you want, rather than, you might say, fishing for whatever information comes up when you search for an informational keyword. There are more specific navigational keywords too, like you might search for “Pollinate Marketing phone number“, or “Pollinate Marketing certifications” — something like that. You already know what you’re looking for, you’re just using Google to navigate your way there.

Commercial keywords

Commercial keywords are the ones that are in between informational and transactional. They’re the second tier, the second stage of the funnel, so to speak.

It’s useful here to imagine a customer. They know roughly what they want from the informational searches they’ve done, but they need to know a little more — they’ll look for specific information and compare brands or businesses to decide on what they want. These are classed as commercial keywords. Examples might be “best SEO agency in Manchester” or “technical SEO vs content for small businesses” — things that more informed customers might search for before coming to a decision later.

Transactional keywords

Transactional — the final stage. This is the stage where the customer’s done enough research and they’re going to make a decision. “Buy X online” — simple, straightforward, decided, high-intent keywords.

I’ve never really liked these four keyword groupings, and commercial / transactional keywords are the reason why. I don’t think there’s a clean enough distinction. Take something like the supposedly commercial keyword “fixed fee accountants manchester”. Maybe it’s my lack of imagination but I simply cannot picture a page where you would want to optimise for that, but not for some kind of transactional keyword like “fixed fee accountant price”. If you wanted to target “fixed fee accountants manchester”, you would target it on your homepage or maybe a dedicated landing page, and — in my mind, obviously, but maybe not? — you would have your pricing on there too. And if the separate grouping of those keywords doesn’t have any meaning in practice, then to me, it doesn’t have any meaning.

I’m not fond of the narrative people use to make sense of the groupings, either. It’s easy to think “well, first the customer searches for informational keywords, then commercial keywords, then transactional keywords, then navigational keywords” and to imagine a linear funnel. But you know from experience that’s not how people make decisions or buy things online.

But regardless — these are the four groupings that Semrush use, and they’re the groupings most people use, so…!

How can you tell what type of keyword a keyword is?

There are a few ways. To be blunt, the first is to just think about search intent and apply a few rules of thumb:

• Is it a question that starts with a word like “how”, “which”, “when” or similar? Then it’s an informational keyword.
• Is it a keyword that specifically names your business, like “Ledbetter Family Law phone number”? Then it’s a navigational keyword.
• Is it a keyword where the searcher is looking to compare things, like “best family law solicitors”? Then it’s a commercial keyword.
• Is it something you would search for if you wanted to buy something now, like “self assessment accountant near me”? Then it’s a transactional keyword.

Another way is to check the search results and get an answer straight from the horse’s mouth, i.e. Google. There are tons of clues as to what kind of keyword a keyword is if you just search for it! Let’s take the example “fixed fee accountants near me”:

You’ll get a screen that looks like this, maybe even with another section underneath titled “Find related products and services”. This is pretty clearly a transactional search, right? Because Google is “helping” you to find somewhere to spend your money ASAP.

Here’s another clue that you’re looking at a commercial or transactional keyword, with the example “buy a car online”:

If you haven’t noticed, now you will every time: Google gives you different tabs depending on what it thinks your search intent is. So, here, after “All” it gives you “Shopping” — again because they want you to spend money. Contrast that with a car-related keyword that Google considers informational:

They know you aren’t looking to buy a car, so the Shopping tab is deprioritised. Another clue (but not one that’s set in stone) is the more informational the keyword, the more likely you are to get a big old AI Overview clogging up the screen.

How to check search intent with Semrush

You could also use an SEO tool like Semrush when you research keywords. Head to their Keyword Overview tab here and type in whatever keyword you want to check, like so:

We’re looking at “how is PAYE calculated”. Set the location if it isn’t set already and click Search. You’ll end up here, where you get access to a ton of different information about the keyword you searched for.

This page tells us a few things: the keyword gets 390 searches from the UK per month, is fairly easy to rank for, and — the relevant point, right in the middle — it’s an informational keyword. You can do this with a free Semrush account (not a sponsor) with which you get 10 free searches per day. You can also sign up for a free 7-day trial (again, not a sponsor) and check as many as you like.

How many types of keywords in SEO?

So, informational / navigational / commercial / transactional are the four buckets that Semrush put keywords into. But you could argue there are several more (sometimes overlapping) keyword categories that might be helpful for you when you’re creating a content plan or optimising a landing page.

Services keywords

These are keywords that are specifically related to a service you offer. This is a great example of the overlap we just mentioned: informational, navigational, commercial and transactional keywords could all be service-related keywords.

Personally I find thinking of keywords as service-related (or not) to be more useful on a practical day-to-day basis than grouping them as informational / navigational / commercial / transactional. The bread and butter of SEO is creating and optimising landing pages — if you’re not doing that, don’t bother doing anything else. And the strongest landing pages always have a mix of informational and non-informational keywords.

Let’s say you’re an accountant, you offer services in Manchester, and you specialise in PAYE. Simple. Well, you would want to optimise your homepage for all four types of keyword:

• Informational terms like “how is PAYE calculated”
• Navigational terms like “[your name] accountants phone number” (maybe not an exact match, but you would have your phone number on the page and maybe a line of text about it)
• Commercial terms like “best PAYE accountants in Manchester”
• Transactional terms like “PAYE accountants near me”

All of this is to say, there’s not that much point you thinking about keywords from the perspective of typical groupings. Rather, you’d get better and quicker results thinking of all the keywords that relate to your services, regardless of what type they are.

Branded vs. non-branded keywords

Here’s another one. Branded vs. non-branded. Pretty clear distinction here: branded keywords are ones that specify your business, and non-branded are ones that don’t. Branded keywords are synonymous with navigational keywords — so if we were to get traffic from “Pollinate Marketing technical SEO”, that could be called either a branded keyword or a navigational keyword. Either way, the search intent is to find the Pollinate site, and specifically the tech SEO service page.

When you’re thinking about targeting keywords, this distinction isn’t that important. You want to target non-branded keywords by default, and by and large, the non-branded keywords take care of themselves. There can be problems where your preferred page doesn’t show up first in search for a branded term, and another less important or less well-converting page does. But that’s generally fixed easily enough with internal linking (i.e., linking from the non-preferred page to the preferred page to signal lesser importance).

Where you’ll hear branded vs. non-branded a lot more is in reporting on your traffic. But that’s not within the scope of this post.

How we use search intent in our content campaigns

The whole point of all of this is that you want to match your page content to the search intent of the user. The closer you can match a page to the search intent of its core keyword, the better your rankings and the more likely your users will convert. Now, as we explained above, there’s not always a clear way to do this — you can come up with examples (and indeed we did) where you would want all four keyword types on one page. But in fairness that’s not always the case. The best way to match search intent for a keyword selection is as follows:

• For informational terms, with blogs. Take a keyword like “what is search intent”, which gets 320 searches a month in the UK alone. It’s possible to fit that into an FAQ on a service page on a content/copywriting/SEO planning service page, but it’s best to address it with a long blog post like this one.
• For navigational terms, with short, information-led pages. Think an About Us page. If someone’s searching for the Pollinate Marketing phone number, or our address, they don’t want to scroll down through a blog to find it, and if they were directed to a product page or something along those lines, they’d probably return to search thinking they wouldn’t be able to find it. Instead, it’s best to have key information like that on a dedicated information-led page where they can find what they’re looking for as quickly and easily as possible.
• For commercial terms, it depends. It’s become exceptionally popular for small businesses to create listicles that compare themselves with other businesses (which is something that LLMs love, but are falling out of love with). That’s a good home for a keyword like “best SEO agency in Manchester”. But the homepage is also a good place for a keyword like that — a user would look through your reviews, pricing, etc. and decide whether you’re the “best” on that basis. That’s just as good a match for their search intent as as a listicle.
• For transactional terms, with product pages, category pages, or conversion-led landing pages (depending on your industry). If someone searches for “buy shoes online right this very second”, they don’t want to scroll through a blog or land on your generic homepage. They want to look at a category page. Or if they look for a specific shoe, the specific product page. Or if you offer services, your service page, with a big contact form at the top of it — no wasting time!

Other than that, you target these keywords in the same way you should always target keywords: use them in your page title and headings, use them in your meta description, use them in your contextual content, and build backlinks and internal links to the relevant page with those keywords as anchor texts.

Are you struggling to create good content? Do your landing pages not convert? Maybe the problem is search intent? Give us a call or get in touch. We can help!