Search Intent

Intent discipline decides site architecture. A guide answering "how does law firm SEO work" serves a learner; a service page serves a buyer; a research page serves a comparer. Blending them produces pages that serve nobody, and building two pages for one intent makes them compete with each other — cannibalization.

Intent is not a judgment call, which is the part that saves arguments. The results page already contains Google's answer: whatever type of page dominates the top ten is what the query means in practice. If a term you assumed was commercial returns nine guides, the intent is informational and a service page will not rank for it regardless of how well it is built. Inspecting the SERP before writing is a five-minute check that prevents months of misdirected work.

Cannibalization is the most common self-inflicted version of getting this wrong, and it is usually invisible without checking. Two pages targeting the same intent split links and impressions, and Google alternates between them rather than ranking either firmly. The diagnostic is Search Console: filter by query and see whether the landing page changes over time. The fix is almost always consolidation, not further optimisation.

Mixed-intent queries exist and need a different treatment. Some terms genuinely return a blend — a couple of guides, a couple of service pages, a local pack — which means the demand is split and one page has to lead with one intent while giving the other a clear path onward.

Every URL on this site is assigned one reader, one query family, and one call to action before it is built, and pages that would fight an existing page do not get built. It is unglamorous governance that compounds: machines can tell what each page is for, and so can visitors.