Digital marketing: Understanding how your target client searches when building content for SEO

In 2019, many businesses are aware that SEO can bring new traffic to their websites. Enough information is available online for people who are willing to do some research to understand that creating content for their website is a necessary component of SEO.

However, not all content is created equal, and there are many businesses which are spending time creating articles, blogs, and other website content (because they know they’re supposed to for SEO purposes), but are focusing on the wrong things while creating the content. As a result, we see sites where lots of content is getting added, but it’s not resulting in higher rankings on Google, more website traffic, or new clients and customers for the business.

The most common mistakes that people make when building content for SEO:

Light content

You need to provide insightful, expert quality content about your services, products, or experiences. Content should be created to satisfy the curiosity of even the most diligent and inquisitive searchers. If you provide an expert service and charge a premium for it, but you only provide two or three sentences about that service on your website, then how does Google understand that you’re actually an expert in your field?

You need to show off your mastery of your work by providing high level, insightful, highly informative content. Remember that Google is an information resource, not a free lead generation service for your business. Google’s purpose is to give users the best available information about whatever it is they need or are interested in. Now, if used strategically and intelligently, Google Search can absolutely be an organic lead generation resource for your business, but you have to provide value to Google users, and in turn Google itself, in order to be rewarded with rankings and traffic that could (hopefully) be converted into new business for you.

Targeting queries or search terms that nobody actually uses

It’s common for websites to try to optimize their site (perform SEO), but to optimize it to rank for searches that people aren’t actually using. So, a site may rank #1 overall on Google for a bunch of queries that nobody actually uses. This is false SEO in a way - it gets you rankings, but no traffic, no new leads, and no new sales. This is a very common complaint from business owners working with SEO providers; they buy placement and rankings for queries that don’t lead to traffic.

Think of the people you want to find your website in Google Search - these are the people you want to do business with, right?

Now, be realistic; how will these people search for the kind of service, product, or information you provide? You have to think like them, not like you. You need to anticipate what these people will search for, then build your site’s content to directly match those searches, and answer their quest for information.

To discover how your target audience is actually searching for whatever it is you are providing, you need to do research. Thorough, careful, detailed research. In many cases, the most used searches are not going to be what you would think they are. If you provide a fairly straightforward product or service that is well known to the public, then the best queries may simply be the name of your service or the description of your product.

If you have a more niche product or a highly specialized service that is less well known to the public, there will most likely be challenges in understanding how your target buyer is searching. In these cases, it’s very important to focus on the questions and informational needs of the target buyer, then provide value by answering their questions.

It’s natural that SEO for more complicated subjects may be more difficult. In cases where there is confusion about your product / service, or users search for solutions to their problems without knowing exactly what the solution is, it’s necessary to build large indexes of content in order to catch many different users who may be searching in many different ways. This is a delicate process (working to target many search terms) because agencies often resort to spammy tactics to do this - building many pages of low quality content that doesn’t offer value.

As with everything, it’s important to provide value, expertise, and authority on the subject.

Disorganized website structure and bad user experience

This is a two-part problem. Site structure can affect a search engine’s ability to find information on your site. Bad user experience can affect a human’s ability to find information on your site. But, these two problems are generally co-dependent. Where bad site structure exists, bad user experience will follow.

Google is a search engine. To find information on website, it crawls those sites. It’s a common misconception that Google can crawl every website with ease.

Think of a house. If a house is clean and organized, it’s easier to find things when you need them. Websites are the same way. When information is organized logically, and separated into clean, tidy, clearly communicated areas, Google will be able to find the content on your website faster and easier, which will in turn result in higher and more consistent rankings in Google Search. It also happens that building information into clearly organized areas is also a core concept behind great user experience in web design.

Remember how we discussed providing value and clear information to users? Part of providing value is created a high quality user experience. This means making it easy for users to find the information they want once they choose to visit your site. When you provide users with the information they need, and make it easy for them to use your site, you’re providing a high quality user experience (UX). Google can understand if your site is providing a good user experience or not, and the quality of your site’s user experience will affect your website’s rankings.

Summing things up

The bottom line is that performing great SEO and content building is time consuming. Important skills and knowledge needed includes:

• Highly informative, thoughtful, insightful, and interesting content writing
• Careful market research and audience building
• Technical understanding of search engine science and trends
• Mastery of website coding
• Psychological awareness of human behavior and user experience
• Testing, monitoring, and quality control processes

Whether you’re a small startup wanting to use SEO to establish a foothold in your local market for basic searches, or a mature organization working to establish far reaching search engine indexing for thousands of complex and specific queries, understanding how your target client / buyer searches for the products or services you provide is a critical step in the SEO process. Without correctly identifying how your targets search, you could be wasting time and money building content that will not bring you the traffic and growth you’re seeking.

The Final Code

SEO agency in Ventura, CA

We have worked on SEO and search engine marketing campaigns for hundreds of companies, from medium scale organizations in Ventura, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles counties, to large international brands with audiences throughout the world. We have successfully built large scale indexing for a variety of industries, client types, and use cases including:

• SEO for services
• SEO for products
• SEO for ecommerce
• SEO for online course
• SEO for the healthcare industry
• SEO for the supply chain industry
• SEO for travel and tourism
• SEO for manufacturing

We’re able to produce repeatable results for our clients by sticking to the core concepts of SEO:

• Knowing how the target clients / buyer personas search
• Building high quality, authentic, expert content that gives value to the target buyers
• Maintaining technical excellence across the client’s website

If you’re experiencing SEO services that are not bringing you new leads, new sales, and new business that you can count on, please contact us for a free consultation to discuss your SEO work and your project.

Get Help With SEO