One of the first challenges when thinking about organic search engine optimization for your web site is to put yourself in the minds of searchers. While you and I both know that you have a cornucopia of important and fascinating information about your company and/or product and you want to tell people all about it, the unfortunate fact of SEO is that it’s not like other forms of marketing: you don’t get to start by telling your story. Instead, you have to start with what your target audience is actually searching for, not what you’d like to think they’re looking for.
Even before you worry about keyword research and specific subject matter, it’s a good idea to understand each of the three basic questions that a search query can be asking and how pages on your site can be crafted to be the best responses to these questions. The first:
Who?
Often search engines users already know who they’re looking for; they just want to know where to find them. “Canadian Tire”, “ECCO Shoes”, or “Government of Alberta”: when searchers enter the exact name of a person or a company into the query field, they are most likely looking for either the official website or some authoritative definition or biography. We refer to these kinds of searches as Identity searches.
Make sure your website is prepared to deal with Identity searches. Is your name common or unique? Is it accurately reflected in your URL? Does your name have more than one meaning? Can it be easily confused with another person or company? Once you’ve made sure your site is clear and descriptive on identity issues, ask yourself what someone would be looking for if they search for you by name. It could be hours of operation, a store locator, events listings, investor relations materials, press releases or employment opportunities. Make sure these pages are optimized to address Identity searches.
What?
This is the kind of search that usually first comes to mind: asking for information about a particular subject. If in the previous example “Canadian Tire”, “ECCO Shoes”, and “Government of Alberta” were about people or companies, “Tires”, “Shoes” and “Alberta” are searches about information. While they may be searches that are part of the user’s process of deciding on a purchase, they may also be purely a search for knowledge about a certain subject.
You might think that trying to capture informational searches have no appeal for your website but there are good reasons to broaden your site’s content to attract these kind of searches. If the information you provide is related to the products or services you offer, visitors who find a good answer to a general question on the subject are more likely to remember your site when it comes time to buy. Useful articles, tools or reference materials on your site are also more likely to be linked to by other sites, which not only provides you with traffic but also helps provide your site with domain and page strength in search engine rankings. For example, almost every industry has a certain amount of jargon related to it. By posting a well written glossary you can not only attract traffic but also links from other related websites which can translate into search engine ranking strength.
Where?
As in where can I buy this thing? Ok, so I’m stretching things a bit to get that third question in but the final type of search that we see is transactional, where someone is ready to make a purchase, hire services, sign up for a class or whatever definition of a conversion that relates to you. These are, of course, our favourite kind of searches but it’s important that your website makes clear how they can actually close the deal. Can they buy online? Is it clear how to request a quote? Do you have a store locator? Is the signup form relatively simple or does it look worse than an income tax form?
It seems obvious that every website should have goals set and that you should have a good idea of what you want your visitors to do once they get there but often we find muddied or conflicted goals and sites that don’t provide clear feedback to users on how they can actually get the things they want.
Understanding the three basic types of searches is the first step to making sure your site is setup to serve all your potential relevant visitors. This goes a long way in helping improve your SEO rankings.
