Cover All Your Bases With Searcher Intent, Says Google

Lily Ray shared an interesting chart from Ahrefs, the SEO toolset, showing how for a single keyword phrase, there were multiple intents from searchers spike over a different time period. In which, John Mueller of Google responded that it makes sense to create content that covers “both possible intents.”

Here is the tweet with the chart from Lily:

An example of why ecomm sites should have content:

Using @ahrefs to analyze rankings for the kw “bar stool”

Orange, red & green = transactional pages

Blue = an article called “how to pick the right bar stool”

Serve all possible intents; Google will pick the one it likes best pic.twitter.com/8NvCbtw03D

— Lily Ray ???? (@lilyraynyc) August 11, 2021

Manley replied about the early November change, and John Mueller said “as I see it, these inferred intents change over time, and it’s a bit out of a site-owners control (sometimes user expectations vary, sometimes algorithms, or other things).”

As I see it, these inferred intents change over time, and it’s a bit out of a site-owners control (sometimes user expectations vary, sometimes algorithms, or other things). By covering both possible intents, you’re hedging against those changes.

— ???? John ???? (@JohnMu) August 12, 2021

So you want to create content that covers all types of intent that your company can provide. We see this a lot with creating blog posts, content pillar pages, and other types of pages – all with the focus of targeting a phrase based on the customer journey to search and acquire that service or product.

“By covering both possible intents, you’re hedging against those changes,” was John Mueller’s advice.

Are you concerned about Google cracking down on this content strategy over time? It feels like we go from one strategy to the next, as Google cracks down on SEOs playing the system.

Forum discussion at Twitter.