Great SEO is Just One Bad Assumption Away

What are your readers/customers searching for online? Answering this question should be the first step of any effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plan. But, for many business owners and/or publishers, this logical occurrence is plagued by wrong assumptions. Publishers simply go down the wrong path and throw off their chances of success.

There is a simple fact that publishers and business owners often overlook: we all speak our own language very well, the language of solutions. Our readers speak in the language of problems. Meaning readers are using text in a search box in a different way than publishers are thinking. Readers are looking to solve problems. Often these two things are quite different, and SEO efforts that fail to take this into account will not reach their full potential. For example, a business owner would say, “We offer articles on boating and all things associated with boating”. The wrong assumption is…the searcher must be typing in the search box, “boat articles”. Wrong! The user is typing in the search box, “Boat repair”. Probably even more detailed than that, such as “Bayliner boat repair” or “prop repair Mercury 302”. Thus, the publisher trying to be found for boat articles loses the SEO race.

It is tempting to think that years of experience and dealing with readers give us a good picture of what they want, need and/or desire.

Three points to remember…

1. The number of people that can find you is typically dwarfed by the number that can't.

2. People use different, much more concise terminology in search engines than they do in conversation.

3. There are more terms in use than we can possibly come up with and remember.

So, first things first, do your research. Using websites like Google Ad Words and Key Word Tracker, will get you started down the path toward SEO success.

Stop assuming and you will start winning.

All the best,

Ryan

Links:

http://www.wordtracker.com

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExterna

www.webmaster-toolkit.com/keyword-research-tool.shtml