You’ll often hear advice from experienced search engine optimisation professionals who say that you should work for your target user group. This may sound slightly off the right track. After all, SEO is supposed to be for the search engines, isn’t it?
Well, no. Search engine optimisation is really about pleasing your target users. Although many techniques are designed to attract search engine attention, even these techniques are ultimately about attracting users. Your site and the search engines should be after the same goal: presenting a website that will attract the largest amount of traffic in the search engine results.
In order to develop a successful SEO campaign, you need to think like your target users. For this, you should ask yourself a few choice questions. Here are a few of the questions every site owner needs to ask when first planning a search engine optimisation campaign:
- What products and services does your company provide? This is the first question to ask, because it will give you the categories you need for keywords. What areas do you need to rank for?
- What searches would you use to find your site’s products? This question can give you a lead on some keywords. Would you type in a single word, or a long sentence to find the product or service your business provides?
- How would you go about finding your company? Once you sort out product and service words, you need to think about your company. You need to ensure users can find you directly if they want to.
- What search engines would you use? Although it often seems like Google is the only player in the search engine game, the other search engines still get significant volumes of traffic. One of the quirks of the net is that groups of users tend to act in the same way. If your user group uses another search engine and you optimise only for Google, you could be missing out on a big chunk of traffic. Researching your users will help you to find out their preferences, and you can talk about this with our consultants at SEO Consult Australia.
- What information are you looking for? This is important for the layout of your pages. If your users are looking for specific information, it’s important to give it to them as soon as they land on your site. The answer to this question can also help you to structure your site.
- What format do you expect? You should already be aware of the quirks of design in your industry. Every industry has its standard formats, and while you can deviate from them slightly, it’s not a good idea to go too crazy. Your target users will be looking for information to be presented in a certain way, and doing otherwise may confuse them.
- What sort of content would you find attractive? This last question can help you to create your content management plan. Again, research your target users. Do they like reading, or would they prefer videos?
