A fully integrated SEO strategy will undoubtedly consist of a mix of on-page and off-page tactics that will ultimately improve a given website’s page rank for a given search term. While SEO is mostly done to benefit the website and the business owner, it sometimes helps to change the perspective of the searching prospects. By creating a content strategy based on the needs of your customers, you’ll be able to target the right keywords and attract traffic that is more likely to convert into sales.
Beyond keywords
Of course, all content marketing done for SEO purposes is based on the idea of providing the content that the prospect is actually looking for. However, creating content around consumer needs rather than a generic search term implies a deeper level of customer satisfaction that is much more likely to result in a sale. For example: A business decides to target a specific keyword based on keyword research. To get more people to find your brand when they search for these keywords and phrases, a lot of (well-optimized) content is created, which somehow contains the most important keyword. Naturally, the surge of content and matching keywords is likely to propel your website up the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages), but what happens then? The alarming reality is that much of this hard-earned traffic often goes to waste, as high bounce rates reflect people clicking through to your website, but not necessarily staying with it. So what can be done to address this problem?
The only way to remedy high bounce rates is to take a close look at the content portion of your brand’s content strategy. The content should not only be keyword-rich, but also value-added, relevant and sometimes entertaining pieces that will encourage the audience to stay longer and maybe take the first steps towards conversion.
Providing customer solutions
If every search term entered into Google is a problem or question that needs answering, consider it your brand’s job to provide a solution to that problem first and foremost. Not to promote or make a sale (which comes after you’ve built a relationship through other channels, like email database marketing), but to make sure the person searching finds content that’s relevant and useful.
To create content that not only gets the clicks, but also the conversions, it’s important to do research that goes a little beyond website analytics. While analytics tools are absolutely critical to creating an SEO strategy, when it comes to SEO and content convergence, it makes sense to think in both human and search engine crawler terms. Conducting surveys through your brand’s consumer email database or social media profile or even testing content strategies regularly through your email newsletter – these are all great ways to learn more about the needs and search terms of your consumers. By providing a solution and engaging content, your brand can beat bounce rates and see more consumers ultimately make a purchase.