The Most Important Part Of Search Optimization Is Easier Than You Think

Search optimization can be very intimidating for most business owners.  And to be honest, there is a lot of technical knowledge that you need to have to do it well.  But if you as a business owner focus on this one aspect of search optimization you can get leaps and bounds above your competition.

The one high-power aspect of search optimization is audience targeting.  When you get your audience targeting in place, many of the other factors that affect SEO, Google and search visibility will also benefit.  

Let’s look at the definition of SEO.  Search Engine Optimization is the process of ensuring that your website shows up when your prospects are searching for you. So by really defining your prospects and locking down detailed audience targeting you are already headed down the path to search optimization.

When it comes to SEO, Google recently mentioned that in the future they are going to to be focusing less on answers and more on a person’s journey.  When you have your audience clearly defined, you will be able to also define their likely journey and also understand when they are ready to buy.

Here are the steps to properly defining your audience so you can benefit from better search optimization.

Audience Targeting For Better Search Optimization Tip 1: Create Targeted Personas

Brainstorm about the similarities and differences between your customers.  Start writing down what features they have in common and with each other and which ones are unique to certain groups of prospects.

You’ll want to identify any basic demographics of your prospect like gender, age, income ranges, etc. Then look at what problems you solve for the prospect and how you help them.  Also, consider why they would use you over your competitors. You can even ask your actual customers and see what they say. It’s a great way to get the real reasons.

We like to write up the information about your prospect in a story that really helps you understand who they are.  You can even give them a name and find a picture that represents them. We call this a Persona. Your Persona should be used when you are looking at creating content on your website for search optimization or any other marketing content. Targeted marketing always works better.

Audience Targeting For Better Search Optimization Tip 2: Create A Content Plan

When people ask how to do SEO we always tell them to start with the basics.  You can’t show up in the search results on Google for content that you don’t have on your website.  So if you want better search visibility, you need to have a content plan.

Your content plan for search optimization should focus on your targeted persona.  Take that information that you have about your prospect and do some keyword research to see how that persona would search for what you do and answers to their questions and solutions to their problems.  Keyword research is crucial for the success of search optimization. You need to know how people search and what your content should be about to increase your search visibility.

There are a variety of tools that can be used for keyword research including Google Keyword Planner, SEM Rush or Ahrefs.  The Google tool is free. The others have free versions with limited access.

Once you have done your keyword research, identify the search terms that have higher search volume and lower competition.  Then identify which keywords you’d like to start with. You can pick 10 phrases and that can be the start of your content plan.

Now comes the hard part.  Set a calendar for the next four months. You’ll want to write about each of the keywords multiple times over the four-month period.  Google likes to see a density of content around a subject.

We recommend that keyword focused blog posts be written weekly and be at least 600 words.  Google prefers longer content and we find that 600-word posts do well in terms of getting ranked and helping with search optimization for business websites.

Audience Targeting For Better Search Optimization Tip 3: Evaluate Your Results

Search optimization takes time to get results but you need to have a process in place to evaluate those results.  

So what are the metrics you can look at to evaluate your search optimization results?  The key metrics are search engine rankings and organic traffic to your website.

You can see your web site’s search rankings via a variety of tools.  Most of them have some sort of free results and give you full data with a paid version.  You can check out SEM Rush, Ahrefs, Moz, or just Google “keyword ranking tracker” as there are many options.

Note that you will have to create content on a regular basis for a couple of months before you see increases in the number and the quality of your keyword rankings.

Organic search traffic is traffic to your website that comes through search engines natural results, not including traffic from search ads.  As you increase the keyword targeted content on your website your search optimization and traffic from organic search results will also increase.

You can see the organic traffic in your Google Analytics.  Simply go to Acquisition then All Traffic then Channels. Here you can see all of the traffic to your website and see where it came from.  Track the traffic from the Organic Search source over time and look for it to increase.

These tips will help you nail down the most important part of search optimization, your audience targeting.  If you have questions or need help with this process, please feel free to reach out.