Search intent for small teams

We end up explaining this on discovery calls often enough that it deserved writing down. Most advice about search intent assumes a team that does not exist at your size. Here is the version that does not.

Search work compounds slowly, which is why it gets abandoned about two months before it would have paid off. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

What to keep

Match the format people expect for that query. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.

What to drop

Process that exists to coordinate ten people is overhead when there are two of you. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge.

What good looks like

Look at the current results to see what the engine rewards. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.

The short version

Search engines are trying to answer a question, so the pages that answer questions clearly tend to do well. Three things worth confirming about search intent before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Look at the current results to see what the engine rewards — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Worth checking on your own setup before it becomes someone else's problem to fix.