Tips
to Clarify and Take Advantage of Visitor Behavior
By
John Alexander
Give this your full attention
because once you are on to this, you may experience a whole new
view of SEO through the eyes of the visiting audience. Recently, someone told me about their objective of selling
a certain product. I asked them who it was, that might buy such a product. They told me
that it might be a certain sports fans. Then they explained the current
strategies they employed. What I notice, is that most of
our focus is ALWAYS on our service or what our product is and
then our
strategy is usually based on thinking up related keywords. While this
can help bring you some traffic, it's still only a fraction of the
benefit which can be realized.
For
example, instead of just gearing up for a bunch of generalized
sports interests, you might do your Wordtracker research and come up with a
very focused strategy based on people's behavior. Hmmm...for
example, if you were selling a shirt to an audience of sports lovers,
how many people are aware that there is an audience of "Hockey
fans" that appear to like "poetry" related to hockey?
Is it safe to say
that all hockey poetry readers are lovers of the sport?
Well probably, but
then how do you really know if an idea like this would work?
This is the
easy part. Simply put together a page and test it out. Find out if it
brings you any increase. Okay let's go back to the beginning and start
over.
Here's
what most people do wrong:
They
hold their product or a service they are trying to sell in their hand and
think to themselves....How can I
promote this thing on the web?
They
scan for "related keywords" and struggle to come up with something in
"high
demand" that relates to what they happen to hold in their hand
(their product or service).
Is
this not true? How many people will build a site selling a product or
service and then think about researching keywords and optimization as a
second step. We see it all the time. Some people never do get to the
step of looking for traffic until after their Web site is all built. This does not mean that we should
not search for related keywords and there are benefits of optimizing by
taking a standard approach.
But
here's
what else you might do as an alternative:
Don't
start by building a Web site - start by researching peoples behavior.
Don't
hold a product in your hand and wonder how to attract an
audience to it.
Try
the exact opposite approach. Instead of choosing a product and then
hunting to see if there is a market for it, try hunting for a unique
market first, by examining people's behavior, then feed a "much
needed" product into that marketplace which you have proven there
is a demand for.
Never
start by randomly guessing at what people MIGHT be doing. Things are too
competitive these days for guess work.
Learn
how to study and analyze what people actually want and then
build that component (what you know will draw them) right into the Web
site. No need for tricks or sneaky stuff. Give them the higher
value useful content that they are really seeking.
Compare
it to the real world. Most people who are investing in a business
selling a new product are certainly going to research the need for the
product. Why would they spend a year developing some new product and
then just "hope" that people will want to buy it. It's far better to
know what people want and then offer them what you know they want, right?
So
why should it be any different for a web site? It's not any different at
all, but
many people just don't understand the importance of taking these steps
up front.
5 Tips to
help you identify visitor behavior:
1.
Zero in on who the target audience is.
Start with your client and ask plenty of questions about who their
target audience is. Try asking your client questions that make then dig in and think about
their own customer behavior.
Ask questions like:
-
Who
is your ideal customer?
-
What
type of business do you LIKE to get?
-
What
type of business is most profitable for you?
-
Can
you help me understand what is IMPORTANT to your customers?
-
Why
do your customers buy from YOU instead of your competitor?
-
What
have you noticed in the way of recent sales trends in sales?
Now
when you ask these types of questions, listen carefully because your
client may just reveal some great information which you can further
research using a tool like Wordtracker.
2.
Learn as much as you can about the marketplace
Every marketplace is completely different so you need to really look
for any additional ways to study it. The point is to try and see things
and understand things from the side of the customer. Again, I love to
extract information from my client because they usually really do know
their own business best and often, they know it better than they think!
I
like to ask more questions of the client such as:
-
Do
your customers face any special challenges?
-
What
is it that your customers say they wish they could find online, that
they can't?
-
Do
you have any inside information that your customers could really
profit from?
-
Sometimes
you may ask your client to actually contact a few customers and help
collect this type of information.
3.
This can be a great time to do a poll
Would your client be able to conduct a poll to determine customer
concerns and or challenges and just collect feedback. There are lots of
online polling services which allow you to collect this information.
eg. http://www.freepolls.com/
eg. http://www.pulsepoll.com/
4.
Collect keywords from your client (but don't guess at them.)
Ask
your client for a list of 30 to 50 single keywords. These are not words
for their keyword Meta tag they are keywords to help you do your
research in the "comprehensive search" feature of
Wordtracker. Enter your singular terms one at a time or add the whole
list. Use the "comprehensive search" feature to do the
thinking for you and extract any of the best related phrases and sort
them in order.
Here
is an e-guide where I explain
exactly how it's done.
Give your full attention to these results because you'll often have a
brainstorm as you consider the usage of these terms. It'll be like a
light coming on, and suddenly you'll realize "why people are using
that certain phrase". You'll also identify any related hot topics.
This is great stuff each time it happens.
Here
are a whole selection of Wordtracker
Tips and tutorials and a free e-book you can read up on.
Also
be sure to collect Wordtracker's Top 1000 report (in the members area) for ideas that might be
good to run through comprehensive search (this often leads to a whole
range of great ideas related to one the or topic).
5.
Stay closely in touch with your client to identify more behaviors after
the promotion launch:
Your
customer will be happy to share stories, tell you of need behavioral
trends at times EVEN before you pick up on them! The reason is that your
client is not just analyzing statistics and looking at reports. They see
business from a first-hand perspective and it is essential to stay in
touch with them regularly. They may notice a certain trend and with
their help, you'll discover other whole new trends within wordtracker,
long before other even think about it.
Did
you know about our hands-on
SEO workshops?
Did
you know we also conduct an Ultra
Advanced Symposium for those who are already more advanced?
We look forward to
working together with you in person to help build your SEO
skills to the maximum.
We hope to see you at one of our training sessions soon.
Highest regards
John Alexander
john@searchengineworkshops.com
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About John Alexander
John Alexander is the Co-Director of
Training of Search Engine Workshops with Robin Nobles. Together,
they
teach 2-day beginner, 3-day advanced, and 5-day all-inclusive
"hands on" search
engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe.
John also teaches online
search engine marketing courses through http://www.onlinewebtraining.com,
and he’s a member of Wordtracker’s
official question support team.
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