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Search intent

What the person typing a query is actually trying to do, which decides what kind of page can rank for it.

Conventionally split four ways: informational (learning something), navigational (going somewhere specific), commercial (comparing before buying) and transactional (buying or contacting now).

Intent is not a judgement call. It is readable directly from the results a search engine already shows: if the first page is all guides, the engine has decided that query is informational, and a product page will not rank for it no matter how well optimised.

The most common cause of a page that never ranks is not quality or links. It is a page built for the wrong intent.

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