Imagine you run an online store selling coffee machines and you manage to rank first for the phrase “how does a coffee machine work.” You get thousands of visitors. But these people don’t want to buy a coffee machine! Maybe they just got one for Christmas and are only looking for instructions on where to pour the water. From a sales point of view, that’s content smog for you.
We distinguish 4 basic types of intent:
A) Informational intent (I want to know)
The user is looking for an answer, learning something.
- Example: “How to remove mold from a wall,” “What is a heat pump.”
- Your goal: Build authority. Don’t push a sale here – just give good advice and capture an email address or a remarketing audience.
B) Navigational intent (I want to go)
The user knows exactly which company or website they’re looking for; they just don’t feel like typing the exact URL.
- Example: “Facebook login,” “Amazon returns.”
- Your goal: Make sure that for searches tied to your brand, you always show up first – not your competitors.
C) Commercial intent (I want to choose)
This is where it gets interesting. The customer knows they want to buy, but hasn’t decided from whom or which model yet. They’re comparing.
- Example: “Best accounting software 2026,” “iPhone 15 vs Samsung S24,” “Heat pump reviews.”
- Your goal: Case studies, comparisons, reviews. Convince them your solution is the logical choice.
D) Transactional intent (I want to buy)
The customer has their credit card out. They’ve made their choice. They’re just looking for a place to “click buy.”
- Example: “Buy iPhone 15 Pro Max 256GB black,” “Daikin heat pump price.”
- Your goal: A smooth checkout, a clear price, free shipping and a BUY button you can see from a mile away.
2. The most common mistake: Mixing apples and oranges
Most company websites lose money by failing to match their content with the right intent.
A real-world example: You’re a lawyer and you want new divorce clients. You create a sales page on your website with a big price list, a “Book a consultation” button and a list of your degrees. You start optimizing this page (SEO) for the keyword: “How to file for divorce.”
Google will never put your page in first place. Why? Because when someone googles “How to file for divorce,” they have informational intent. They want to read about the process, they want a form template. They don’t want to see a lawyer’s price list right away.
If you want to rank first for this phrase, you have to write an in-depth, 2,000-word article for free. Only at the very end can you gently add: “Too complicated? Leave the paperwork to us.”
3. How to find out what Google wants from you (a 5-second hack)
You don’t need to pay for expensive SEO tools to understand search intent. Google itself tells you what kind of content it prefers. You just have to listen.
Step by step:
- Open Google in incognito mode.
- Type in the keyword you want to rank first for.
- Look at the first 5 organic results. What do you see?
- If it’s nothing but online stores and product pages, it’s transactional intent. There’s no point writing a blog article for it. You need to get your product page in there.
- If it’s nothing but blogs with numbers in the headlines (e.g. “7 tips on how to…”), it’s informational intent. There’s no point optimizing your pricing page for this phrase. You need to write a better article than your competitors.
- If there’s a map and local businesses, Google knows the person is looking for something nearby (local SEO).
Write for people, and the algorithm will follow
At a time when artificial intelligence can generate thousands of words in a few seconds, average content has lost all its value. Google no longer cares how many times you repeated a keyword in the text. It cares about one thing only: Did your website solve the user’s problem so well that they didn’t need to keep searching?
Stop chasing empty search volumes. It’s better to get 100 visitors a month from a keyword that hits transactional intent exactly (and brings in 10 sales) than 10,000 visitors from an informational keyword, none of whom buy a thing.
The goal of marketing isn’t traffic. The goal is profit.
❓ Q&A: Search intent in practice
What if one keyword has several intents? For example, just the word “iPhone.”
This is called “mixed intent.” If you type just “iPhone” into Google, Google doesn’t know whether you want to buy one or just read a review of the latest model. So it shows you a mix on the first page: Apple’s official website (navigational), a few online stores (transactional) and video reviews (commercial). For smaller companies, it’s extremely hard to rank for these one-word generic terms. Focus instead on so-called long-tail keywords with a clear intent (e.g. “iPhone 14 screen replacement price”).
I have a sales page on my website that gets zero traffic. Does that mean I’ve got the search intent wrong?
Probably, yes. Lots of companies name their page something like “Comprehensive B2B synergies.” But nobody types that into Google, so the intent doesn’t even exist. You need to find out what customers call your product when they’re thinking about it, and adjust the copy and headings on the page accordingly (e.g. “Outsourced HR management for companies”).
Is it even worth creating informational content (blogs) when I mainly want to sell?
Absolutely. Very few customers buy on their first visit. Informational content catches customers at the very beginning of their buying journey (in the TOFU stage of the marketing funnel). If you give them excellent, free advice in a blog article today, your brand anchors itself in their minds as the expert. When they’re ready to pull out their wallet three months later, they won’t go to Google to look for an anonymous competitor – they’ll come straight to you.
