Understanding Your Audience Through Keywords

When I’m sat at home watching TV, the advertiser doesn’t know me from Geoff. I’m only here because the scheduled program was of some interest. Outside of this, potential advertisers know very little about me. This is where the Web is utterly different. Each visitor who lands on your page, came from somewhere. Think about it: If they came from a search engine, then we know their intentions will lie behind the search terms they entered into Google. If they followed a link, then it is likely they saw something on the referring site which led them to believe we can help them out. We already understand something about their desires and purpose and by applying just a little tracking data we might be able to better understand what really makes them tick.

Using Google Analytics to Guide Page Structure

So what does this have to do with page structure, SEO and how you break up your content? Well, I like to imagine each page as an island. While they may share a common purpose and phrases, each will deal with a slightly different topic and can therefore be used to target different searches. Each page needs to be targeted towards a particular audience. Lets suppose you are a plumber who performs everything from central heating to plumbing repair and boiler installation. It would be very tempting to lump a all this information together under a general page ‘services’ which might include lists of statements.  By simply breaking up the different services across pages, and padding the content out with text you will have more room to optimise each page for variations on themes around their target optimisation phrases and this will allow you to deliver highly relevant content, which in turn will improve your bounce rate and therefore the success of your SEO as a whole.

Identifying Content That Works for Your SEO

Looking through your Google Analytic data for low bounce rate phrases people found you for will help you work out which visitors were receptive to your content after entering their search terms. You might refine the optimisation of each page to remove or rephrase terms that have a high bounce. One or two bounces is quite normal, but if you’ve had five or ten visits and have a bounce rate over 75%, this might be caused by optimised search terms that are either slightly ambiguous or perhaps a little vague. It might even be nothing wrong with the content itself, but simply the message includes too much information that is not relevant to your search visitor, who might wrongly conclude you could not satisfy their need because they simply didn’t read far enough down the page! If you add content to the site regularly, keeping track of your tracking data will also help you identify demand for a particular topic and allow you to pitch information you know will work.

Deciding When a New Page Will Help Your SEO

The questions to ask yourself are surprisingly straight forward: “What type of audience is this message aimed at?”, “What will this audience be looking for?” and “What sort of action do I wish to encourage from each type of visitor once they find this page?”. If you allow these questions to govern the structure of your site, you will never go far wrong. If content is king, then how you divide up your Kingdom will determine how effectively each page can work together and will improve the overall quality of your SEO.

It’s probably going to come as no great surprise to you that sometimes people just don’t get SEO. It’s this lack of understanding that leads people label us as spammers, evildoers and opportunists (sound familiar, Mr. Powazek?). I’m not interested in what certain angry bloggers have to say though – I’m interested in the misconceptions my clients have. And before I tackle them, I need to identify them.

Myth: Meta Keywords are the Holy Grail.
I can see your responses now, even before you click that comments box. “1995 called – they want their search algorithms back.” The sad fact of the matter is that some clients have still told us that their last SEO company just filled their meta tags full of spam and pocketed the fee. And this at a time when Google and Yahoo are denying all use of meta keywords.  The more people that understand the much-maligned meta keywords tag, the less opportunity there’ll be for unscrupulous and uninformed types to take them for a ride.

Reality: Your meta keywords tag really isn’t important. It doesn’t matter that the “SEO” section of your off-the-shelf CMS says it is, so don’t lose any sleep over it.

Myth: SEO companies have access to a Search Engine Hotline.
“Can’t you just call Google and get them to index my site today?” – If I had a penny for every time I’d heard that, I’d have about enough for a half of mild at a nearby pub. As ludicrous as this question seems, it actually makes some sense. Do any other complimentary industries have the same lack of direct communication that Search Engines and SEOs have? Explaining that we can’t call Yahoo head office is an important part of managing client expectations.

Reality: The search engines aren’t your ISP. They don’t have huge call centres, and they won’t offer you a deal if you complain.

Myth: Results are instant.
We’ve optimised the content, sourced some quality links and made sure the site’s as accessible as possible. Now begins the waiting for the inevitable “so why haven’t my listings changed? It’s been a week” call. In a world of instant communication, instant gratification and instant coffee, it’s hard to explain to a client that the Search Engines can work on near-geological timescales.

Reality: SEO is a long-term plan. If you want something right now, then you should probably be investing in AdWords.

Myth: Being a market leader automatically entitles you to the top spot.
“I’m a 5* hotel, they’re a pokey b&b – so why are they top and I’m on page three?” Explaining that your word of mouth reputation isn’t automatically linked to your online reputation is crucial to helping clients understand how the search engines work. By showing them that time and effort can get the underdog to top spot, you’re showing them the power of SEO and re-enforcing the whole patience thing we looked at above.

Reality: Wikipedia are top of Google for “cola”, and they don’t even have a bottling plant.

Myth: There’s a magic “Top of the SERPs” code.
The number of people that think they can hit the top of the SERPs without making changes to their website is staggering This could be a throwback to the days of spammy framesets, but it could equally just be wishful thinking. It’s enticing to believe that there’s some magic button that can be pushed so they can reap rewards with minimal effort, but it’s important to let them know that there’s no cheat code. Even though it is tempting to tell them that if they put <meta name=”godmode” content=”iddqd”/> into the code, their competition will be Doomed.

Reality: Seriously. IDDQD solves all your problems. Without it, you’re up against Hell on Earth.

As SEO professionals, it’s our job to educate and inform our clients about how what we do works. Once we’ve done that, we can turn our attentions to the evildoers and opportunists looking to get some traffic by disparaging our hard work.

This weekend, Andrew’s heading to Leeds United’s away game vs. Millwall. He could really do with some sort of invincibility code for that.