This post marks the start of a new section on the Digital Muscle blog, one that is aimed towards beginners and people that do not know that much about search engine optimisation. We will try to highlight some advice that helps you do better work when you tackle SEO alone and help business owners understand the value that is brought forth by SEO, just as one of our clients realized.
Without, further ado, let’s jump right into the topic. At first glahttps://www.digital-muscle.com.au/seo-client-case-study-70-ctr-increase/nce it may seem that this is not related to search engine optimisation but if you maintain an open mind, you will quickly realize how vital this is.
If you recently launched a startup or you have been running your company for a long time and did not have great results, the importance of identifying the audience is huge. The products or services that you try to sell may appeal to a pretty large group of people or may only be attractive for a restricted audience. The lower the audience, the higher the necessity of identifying who you need to reach!
Identifying Your Audience!
It is very important that you think about what audience you want to have but at the same time, you need to be sure that the audience is actually interested. You may think that your audience is one when the truth is that the customer that is more entitled to make a purchase falls into a different category.
Identifying A Customer Profile
Your research can obviously start with the internet. There is a lot of free information available about the market you operate in, the potential customer, the competition, and the industry. The problem is that in some situations, the data you find is not 100% useful for your purposes. Even so, it is a very good idea to first see what others already researched.
The customer profile that you create has to be as detailed as possible. This includes but is not limited to:
- Demographics – Gender, location, marital status, family income, etc.
- Psychographics – The consumer’s buying psychology, hobbies, lifestyle, etc.
The more you find out about the customer that would be interested in your products or services, the higher the possibility that your SEO and marketing campaigns would be properly created.
Where Can You Find Your Clients?
You need to learn what sites the target audience visits and what social networks are frequently checked. Is the audience checking emails often or is there an affinity to mobile apps that is noticed?
When you know where the audience is and how technology is used, the campaigns that you create will be better targeted. You will use keywords that are actually used by people that may make purchases. In many situations, this is the difference between success and failure.
Always Monitor Your Campaigns
Identifying the target audience is never the last step you have to make in your overall research. You need to keep an eye on what happens, the competition, and industry trends. Customers naturally evolve and this influences the best keywords that can be used for optimisation purposes.
Identifying What Your Audience Wants!
After the audience is identified, it is time to figure out exactly what it wants. Maybe there is a problem with your product, one that you do not know anything about. While it is difficult to figure out what the audience wants, here are some resources that are already available for you and that you can use:
1. The Competition
This is a really simple way to learn a lot about the wishes and needs of the audience you have since your audience is most likely the same as your competition.
A smart SEO professional will always try to leverage content in order to get SEO benefits. If you manage to do this correctly, you have huge gains that work so well for the clients and SERP.
By analyzing what the competition does, you can figure out what works great and what does not work well. This aids you to quickly realize what type of content you need to create in order to get free backlinks, which are valuable as gold for ranking purposes.
2. Surveys
Surveys do not have high popularity since they are usually boring and long. However, the information that they offer is huge from a marketing point of view. Try to set up some sort of survey or, at least, open some sort of feedback channel. Keep in mind that you can also find surveys that were done by others in the past. They can appear in newspapers, magazines and on the internet.3. Comments
You can engage the target audience through comments but that also allows you to see what the target audience wants. Make sure that you allow comments and that you encourage them. This does not only include the website. You want to have comments on every resource available from forums to Facebook pages. If necessary, you can even run threads on Reddit.
4. Keyword Research Tools
This is the most used method and there is a good reason for that: it works. You can use keywords research tools, AdWords, and many other tools in order to figure out what the audience wants. A simple example is Google Trends, which can tell you how interested people are in certain topics at a period of time.
5. Social Networks
Track the target audience and its behavior on social networks. This offers free information that you can use and you will love what you find. Start with Twitter Hashtags and check discussions. Then, move towards other social networks and groups.
Conclusions
What was written above is general in nature? We completely acknowledge that. However, it is enough to get you started. The more you know about your audience and what it needs, the more quality you can offer! Quality is very important and it is the center of a good SEO or marketing campaign.
If you are having problems researching data about your audience and its needs, you have to seriously consider hiring professionals to do the research for you.
