While there is lots of technical work that goes into search engine optimization, the content of a website is equally important. The more you know about your customers, the better able we are to produce content that search engines will match with your customers’ searches.
It starts with key words, and your front line staff are in the best position to keep track of what those are. Here’s an example. Let’s say you sell swimming pools. What do customers ask your sales staff most often? Have they already done some research? Do they ask about a particular brand? Do they ask for a particular feature? Do they use terms like “inground,” “fiberglass,” or “infinity?” Or are they more likely to say that they want a “backyard pool” that’s “easy to maintain?”
That kind of information helps us in a couple of ways. First, it gives us a place to start our research. If most customers come in knowing that they want either a fiberglass or concrete pool, we can find out which of those keywords is most searched in your market area. If the results show a ratio of 25 searches for fiberglass pools for every 1 concrete pool, we know that we want to focus on fiberglass. If the results are fairly equal, we’ll probably suggest that you have a separate page for each type, allowing us to optimize the individual pages for each key word.
The other important factor though, is that key words also give us some insight into buyers’ “decision making criteria.” If they are asking about pools that are easy to maintain, we’ll create content on that topic. Since search engines look at far more than just key words, it’s not enough to use “easy to maintain” in a title or tag. You need to have quality content to go with that. So, what we’ll do, is develop a few paragraphs, perhaps an illustration or video, showing what “easy” means, and how that compares to other pool options.
Yes, we are experts in search engine optimization; but, you are the expert when it comes to your customers. And you can help us help you, by paying attention to how your customers ask for what they want.