SEO Bootcamp: Learn the Basics of SEO in 2 Weeks (2016)

Chapter 3. Your Target Users: The Beginning of your Search Marketing Strategy

When developing a search marketing strategy for a website, you need to start thinking about the group of people who may find value in the information found in your website. They are the types of people who are most likely to click on your webpage when they see it in the search result page. Search engines bridge the gap between your website content and people who need them.

Profiling your target search engine users

Internet users make billions of searches every month. Not all of these searches however, are valuable to your website. The number of people looking for the types of information in your website depends on the popularity of the industry or niche of you website. The more popular the niche, the more searchers it will have. Popular niches however, also have a lot of competition.

To get ahead of your competition, you need to get to know your ideal visitors. You can do this by creating a profile of the ideal visitor for your website. If you already have website that has been running for a while, you may be able to gather some information about the types of people who are visiting your website through the analytics software that you use. Here are some types of the information about your visitors that you will need:

· Age

· Gender

· Language

· Location

· Common interest

By obtaining these types of information, you will be able to guess the words that people are most likely to use when using search engines. You may also need some additional information depending on the type of website that you have.

Your goals for your visitors

After creating a profile of your ideal visitors, you need to decide on what you want these people to do when they arrive at your website. If you are selling something on your website, you may need to tweak the design to make sure that the users can start making a purchase from your indexed pages.

Other websites want their visitors to fill up forms, answer surveys, or sign up for membership.

Having a goal also allows you to refine the types of keywords that you are targeting. If you are selling something for example, you may need to target purchase-related phrases. Some marketers only target phrases used by people who are in the late stages of the purchasing process.

Activity for Days 5 and 6: Identify your Target Users

The next activity is to identify the characteristics of the ideal visitors for your website. Ideal visitors refer to the people who are most likely to do what you want accomplished. You should state what these people have in common. Aside from the information stated in chapter 3, you should also research on other websites that also cater to the needs of the same target market. You should check out their designs and the types of content that they offer.