The common kinds
Informational: "what is a dofollow link". Navigational: "product hunt login". Commercial: "product hunt alternatives" or "g2 vs capterra". Transactional: "submit startup free" or "og image size checker". The same topic can have all four, and each needs a different page.
How to read it
Search the query and look at what ranks. If the results are tools, a long article will struggle; if they are guides, a bare tool page will. Google has already worked out what searchers want, and the results show it.
Matching it
Give the searcher what they came for at the top of the page: the answer, the tool or the comparison table. Then add depth below. A page that makes someone scroll past an introduction to find what they searched for loses them.
Mixed intent
Some queries have more than one intent: "product hunt" could mean the site itself, how to launch there, or alternatives to it. Search results for such queries show a mix of page types. A page aimed at one of the intents can still rank, but it competes only for that share of the searchers.
Example
"google play feature graphic size" is transactional: the searcher wants the size and to fix their image. A page that states "1024 x 500" and checks the image matches it better than a long article.
Questions people ask
- Why does my page not rank for its keyword?
- Often because it answers a different intent than the pages that rank. Compare your page with the top results and match the format they share.
- Can one page target several intents?
- Usually not well. A page that tries to be a guide, a tool and a comparison at once tends to do none of them as well as a focused page.
Related terms
- Long-tail keywordA long-tail keyword is a specific, usually longer search query with fewer searches than a broad term, but clearer intent and less competition, such as "app store subtitle character limit".
- Keyword difficultyKeyword difficulty is an estimate of how hard it is to rank on the first page for a search query, usually based on the strength of the pages and sites that rank there now.
- Featured snippetA featured snippet is a short answer Google shows above the regular results, taken from one page and credited with a link. It appears for many question style searches.
- Title tagThe title tag is the HTML <title> element of a page. Search engines usually show it as the clickable headline of a result, and browsers show it in the tab.