User intent is the backbone of all business. After all, if you aren’t providing a service or product that the customer is seeking out and intends to purchase or otherwise make use of, you’ll find yourself out of a job in a heartbeat. When it comes to the World Wide Web and search engine optimization, however, user intent is often overlooked — if it’s even considered at all. As Google and other search engines continue to aim at answering well the very specific queries and needs of the millions of people conducting searches in any given hour, user intent has taken on a refreshed and far-reaching importance.

If your SEO hasn’t been heavily seeded with research and concessions in regards to user intent, its effectiveness will be diminished. From its ability to provide you with insight into how to provide better content to its ability to increase conversion rates, digging into the world of user intent will improve your SEO strategy and your bottom line.

It Helps Provide More Relevant Content

All of the content you publish on your website or blog is probably optimized for SEO, which makes sense. After all, you want the content you create to drive search engine traffic to your site. When you consider user intent alongside the goal of increasing traffic, what you’ll find is that you will actually start to create content that is more relevant to your site’s visitors. Considering what people intend when they start their Internet treasure hunt and what they’re hoping to find at the end will help your content be more focused and more relevant, which will grant you more leads and more customers.

It Provides for Clearer Demographics

As mobile and local search becomes more and more ubiquitous, the demographics of who is searching for your business and why become more clear. Roughly 3 billion Google searches a month (about 30 percent of all its searches) include a location. You can capitalize on that aspect of user intent by simply optimizing your website and online presence for local searches, but that isn’t the only way your demographic is getting clearer. Your site’s analytics can reveal the specific keywords and phrases that led each visitor to your website. As you discover what your site’s visitors are looking for, you can better understand them and serve their needs.

It Reveals Your Customers’ Desires

You may make the best whale oil in the world, but if no one has a use or desire for it, it doesn’t matter. Paying attention to user intent can keep you from trying to make whale oil. Because it highlights your customers’ and potential customers’ desires, understanding user intent can actually help guide your business plan, mission and model.

It Will Increase Conversions

Conversion rate optimization, at the end of the day, is essential to your business’s long-term success, and while there are plenty of tools and tests that can be utilized to increase it over time, user intent is one of the most important. By simply understanding what a visitor to your site wants, you can supply it on the page they’ve clicked through to.

Does a visitor want tax advice with no strings attached? Don’t just embed a phrase like “free tax advice no strings” on your accounting firm’s landing page. Instead, build content that actually provides tax advice without any strings attached. Doing so will satisfy the user’s intent, improve your landing pages, while it also builds a lead and potential customer, increasing your conversion rate.

It Supplies Better Keywords

SEO strategy is all about keywords, and nothing supplies great keywords like honing in on user intent. If you run a ballet academy, and there are parents in your area looking for a high-quality inexpensive ballet school that specializes in dancers of intermediate skill between the ages of 10 and 13, you don’t have to settle for keywords like “ballet school” anymore. Instead, you can use that very specific user intent to craft pages and content that will make sure those users find your site and your school because of the very specific searches they’re performing.

User Intent Is King

The search engine user’s experience is what drives all search engine results and rankings. Because of this fact, user intent is more important than anything else in the world of SEO. Every search that happens on Google is undertaken with a particular goal in mind, and mining and meeting that goal is what makes for successful SEO strategies.

User intent is here to stay, and it will most likely only gather importance as time goes on. As you go about the work of fine-tuning your business’s SEO strategy, make sure user intent is at the center of your efforts so your time, money and content don’t go to waste.