How People Interact With Search Engines

One of the most important elements to building an online marketing strategy around SEO is empathy for your audience. Once you grasp what your target market is looking for, you can more effectively reach and keep those users.

We like to say, "Build for users, not for search engines." There are three types of search queries people generally make:

• "Do" Transactional Queries: I want to do something, such as buy a plane ticket or listen to a song.
• "Know" Informational Queries: I need information, such as the name of a band or the best restaurant in New York City.
• "Go" Navigation Queries: I want to go to a particular place on the Internet, such as Facebook or the homepage of the NFL.

When visitors type a query into a search box and land on your site, will they be satisfied with what they find? This is the primary question that search engines try to answer billions of times each day. The search engines' primary responsibility is to serve relevant results to their users. So ask yourself what your target customers are looking for and make sure your site delivers it to them.

It all starts with words typed into a small box.

	How people use search engines has evolved over the years, but the primary principles of conducting a search remain largely unchanged. Most search processes go something like this:

	Experience the need for an answer, solution, or piece of information.

	Formulate that need in a string of words and phrases, also known as “the query.”

	Enter the query into a search engine.

	Browse through the results for a match.

	Click on a result.

	Scan for a solution, or a link to that solution.

	If unsatisfied, return to the search results and browse for another link or ...

	Perform a new search with refinements to the query.
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