SEO- Some More Learning

Before we talk about seo specifically user intent and keyword research, lets have a look at what one seo-expert ideally needs to look into or be provided with?

Before one really starts working on seo, the expert MUST also work on the targeted audience. This means that one needs to really know the customers like the back of his hand!

I need to stress on the importance of user-intent and the keyword research part in the process of good seo practice. The closer the prediction on what the user will be typing in the search box, the better the ranking on the search engine, hence the better the results on the search engine result pages ( SERPS)! Isn’t that everyone is gunning for afterall?

But before that, lets look at the homework one needs to do in order to reach the user intent and keyword research stages? The seo-expert needs to study the targeted audience in detail, like its done in branding. One would know that in order to know their customers, there are some steps to be followed and NOT to be missed ever? In seo, these are quite the same but with a little difference. According to some references, I have been reading up, one reason simply came across clearly to me, it was to study the roadblocks? That is to say the problems faced by the users, the kind of questions they might post when looking, searching for some product, depending on their intent at the time of searching? Whether the questions posed are exact, direct or somewhat in the region or simply to do some research in order to weigh their options, in which case they would be more informative? Another question to be answered while studying the customers, and this part comes from branding or good market research or strategic market research, would be the demographics of the customers, whether they are males, females, the age groups they belong to, which background do they belong to, in short as mentioned earlier, the demographics and their psychographics- in short their interests and hobbies? Since these topics give a very detailed study if done right, one gets to know their target-customers better? Along with the demographics and psychographics of the customers, one needs to cover related informations such as if a customer is looking for a partcular type of shoes say gym shoes, then what sorta information ( related/complementary information ) the individual could be interested in? All these answers woud lead one to a very detailed picture of the targeted audience! Now, once the audience is clear, one can go ahead with building a relevant seo-strategy and then onto the content-marketing strategy.

When it comes to early non-negotiable steps to seo, although it can be more detailed, but we would be concentratin on the user-intent as mentioned a little earlier in the blog. They could be of two kinds namely commercial intent or informative intent?

The commercial intent would simply refer the exact types of product, including the shape, size, design and brand in mind. here, the user is very clear about what exactly does he or she needs to search for? The customer here is most likely to buy the product.

Some more examples of commerical intent could be the following ;

1. mountain bikes

2. new delhi design studio

Informative intent would be primarily for research, when the user maybe wants to do some reasearch and weigh his options. Exampes of informative intent would be namely such as;

1. best gyms in new delhi

2. accessories needed for gym

3. alternate to joining gym

The essential part would be simply that these queries ( what one feeds in the search engines ) as informative questions regarding the roadblock one user might have or even anything related to the same query such as alternate to gyms as given in the example above.

When it comes to keyword research for seo, as far as I have read and read, I feel a keyword is not just about looking for keyword which are most popular with high domain authority ( DA ) and page authority ( PA), which come closest to your niche business, which are popular in your industry, rather one needs to focus now on long tail keywords. Long tail keywrods are simply keywords which would be in more than 3-4 words, a phrase so to speak. This really works! And I also believe it is given its credit by prominent search engines like Google too!

Long tail keywords is something many woud ignore but BELIEVE it or not, it is something which will help one to get better results, also verfied by several articles I have been reading online! I remember this from my uni-days too when I was in my masters program. Anyway, the long tail kewords is ideally 3-4 words or more, a phrase so as to speak. There are reasons for it, and they make perfect sense really. The traditional keywords would be a single word or some semantic word, related, correlated compared to the long tail keywords. In the latter’s case, the group of keywords get more granular, descriptive, hence proving clearly the user’s intent primarily. All thanks to the smart users today! There is also the reason for the major competitiveness on the SERPS. Since when a user is looking for a specifc product, there will be a lot of major brands who are showing on the first page, for the most obvious reasons, with the help of their MULLAH! But, do not get disheartened since one needs to smart about the seo-practice, to believe in the system and follow the process!

Facts about the long-tail keywords compared to the short term keywords or just keywords

1. low competition

2. high traffic

3. high conversion rates

Conclusively, if one seo-fan like myself or an expert, does things the right way, although it is the long-road, one will surely see good results at the end of the process, but it is not to be taken lightly as the practice of SEO is a long-term one and one needs to keep their content- fresh and relevant in order to reap the real benefits along with all the good se practice!

I would explore seo more and more in the future and try share as much as possible.

Cheers for reading!

#seo #searchengineoptimization #longtailkeyword #userintent #keywordresearch