SEO Strategy and Customer Needs

Written by: Gary Horsman

The Truth You Don’t Want To Hear

How Well Does Your SEO Strategy Mesh with Your Customer Needs?

If you can design your search engine optimization strategy to match the needs of your potential customers then you will really be powering up the performance of your website SEO.

Imagine that your SEO strategy matches what your potential customers are searching for to meet their needs. This match creates a motivated individual. This individual has a need and is trying to hunt down (searching for) a solution. If your SEO approach is to create content that a consumer needs then this will lead to a deeper degree of search satisfaction when the searcher discovers your content via a search engine.

A key indicator of whether your content is found to be delightful to the searchers is to observe and track the bounce rate of the content that you produce. A high bounce rate puts your SEO efforts to waste (I know you don’t want to hear this). Searchers (the hunters) find your content but then bounce away to search again for something more meaningful, interesting or of higher quality. If your content is not satisfactory (as a minimum standard) then forget your SEO efforts as they are wasted. Create delightful content based on the needs of your audience. Get your content right!

The best way to reduce bounce rates is to go way beyond creating content that is keyword phrase rich. Your content needs to add value, has to be relevant and perhaps even has something entertaining (like a cool graphic, photo or video). This worthy content encourages your visitor to linger longer and perhaps even take the next step to doing business with you (perhaps this is what you want to hear).

By the way, this raises an important point. Let’s say that your content piece has been found in search (lucky you!), the searcher likes it (you are better than lucky you are good!!) then what if this super valuable visitor does not know the next step (oh no!). Perhaps they know the next step but they perceive the next step to be a giant leap and are just not ready. It is like you have them interested on your first date and then propose marriage at the end of the date (not a good move Romeo).

Make sure that you have a call-to-action or a next step defined and do not make the next step too difficult. Perhaps you only want then to subscribe to your blog or download a special report or order a free evaluation. Think of a next step that is again meshed with the needs of your audience and make it a small next step and one that will add value.

When trying to attract customers online it is a one-step-at-a-time approach and sometimes a series of small steps are needed that ultimately lead to a conversion.

The simple next step: Use the easy subscription field to subscribe to this blog (at the top of this page in the right column). Top

The more advanced next step: If you want to learn more about Content Marketing I invite you to take our Tutorials on Content Marketing. Here is a link to the Introduction to Content Marketing.

The best next step subscribe and take the tutorials!

My last point is to stress that the best content and best SEO meshes your SEO strategy and customer needs.