In order for your website to be successful, people need to find it. If no one lands on your site, no matter how great your content or how compelling your offerings are, no value gets generated for your business.
While this principle is obvious, how to get people to find your site is not. Search engine optimization can be a complicated, difficult process and requires a nontrivial amount of resources to be done well.
While getting your site to show up when people search isn’t easy, luckily, what you need to do isn’t a mystery. Almost all respected experts agree that user experience is vital. Blake Bobit, experienced web designer and founder of Solution Scout, recently explained why it’s so important for improving a website’s search performance, “User experience, often unperceived, is the vital pulse that breathes life into the heart of our digital encounters, making technology meaningful, accessible, and delightful.
SERP Data
If you want to match search intent better, you need to examine the result pages for your keywords. When you put your keywords through Google’s search engine, you can study the type of results it brings up. It’s important to run this test in incognito mode to get unbiased search results.
By checking through the SERPs, you can analyze keywords and understand why certain pages perform better than others. You’ll also see which pages appear at the top of search results and the type of content they have. This lets you know what content to create and possible improvements to existing content.
Let’s take another look at the puppy’s example. If a user searches for “how to take care of puppies,” the top search results will provide paragraphs of information on maintenance. So, you’ll definitely want your content to appear in those search results.
How can you improve your content? You can choose to create a numbered list. This might be shorter than paragraphs, but it’s more appealing because users can read faster. Analyzing SERPs will also give you a better grasp of making relevant content that can beat your competitors’ offerings.
Existing content
If you already have content for your web pages, you’ll need to review them. It’s the only way to guarantee your existing content aligns with the user intent. First, look at the keywords for your content by searching them on Google. You’ll also need to look at the search results and see what content type ranks in them.
Based on your findings about the top-ranked articles, you can see how your content is performing against the top-ranking spots. If your content doesn’t fit with the selected keywords, you’ll want to review the keywords and choose ones that appear in more relevant search results.
Alternatively, you can revamp the existing content on your platform. This would involve rewriting and updating content so it better matches the keywords in your article.
The Difference Between Search Engines
Prioritizing Google and ignoring other search engines could mean missed opportunities to rank on those platforms. Google might be the most popular search engine, but you need to also rank higher on other platforms like Bing and Youtube.
YouTube is currently the second most popular social media platform. It has an estimated 2 billion users worldwide. This means your content will rank higher for your target keyphrases as your video gets more views. That said, users will only be able to find your video if you’re using closed captions or writing relevant topics.
Compared to Google and Youtube, it’s safe to say Bing is usually taken for granted. However, it still has search intent and SEO potential. A certain percentage of online users don’t install Chrome and choose to use the Linux-based Windows 10. This means Bing is still their default search engine. If you ignore it, you’re missing out on an entire subset of prospects for your business.
Queries
Online users need to have certain preferences they won’t make obvious. As a digital marketer, it’s your job to optimize your content for presented intent (active queries) and hidden intent (passive queries).
Active queries are searched intent that is obvious to see from the query syntax. On the other hand, passive queries are searched intent that needs to be drawn from insights. For instance, a user may search for the “best steakhouse in Colorado”. This search query explicitly requests (active intent) a list of steakhouses in Colorado. It also implicitly asks for other information, i.e., reviews, maps, and photos.
Satisfying both active and passive queries is key to driving user engagement and conversion. It lets you provide instant and valuable information to your target customers. Additionally, you can create value by addressing your audience’s passive intent.
