Do you think you know all about SEO? Do you think it is all about keywords, content, and optimization? Well, it’s not quite true. Search engine optimization has more to do with psychology rather than that of the content, site architecture, and website coding.
Why do we seek the help of Google or another search engine? It is because we actually are seeking an answer to some queries. The search engine is highly dependent on user intent. How your targeted audience is thinking and putting their queries into words is an important factor in SEO. You need to think from a user perspective to get your website ranked on the SERPs. Understanding the psychology of your targeted audience is crucial for every online marketing strategy. This is applicable to SEO as much as any other digital marketing channel.
If you think you know all about SEO then you need to think twice. We are forming this article to let you all know the needful few things about the psychology of SEO:
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Knowing your audience:
Knowing your audience is the core of SEO. You need to know exactly what makes your audience tick. You need to understand the psychology of the people who need your product/service or who are likely to avail your product/service.
Before starting anything you need to develop for the different categories of potential people who are likely to convert. If you’re an established company, you can always start with your existing customers. Engage with them to find out their pain points and the area of interest. What actually motivates them to visit your platform again and again? And don’t just stop there, you also need to conduct market research to identify other viable prospects.
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Think from the customer’s perspective
Thinking from a customer’s perspective is really important in SEO. Now that search engines have grown so much sophisticated they can deeply assess the user intent with great accuracy. Understanding the intent of ideal customers you can make major advances in SEO.
A customer has four phases:
- Awareness
- Research
- Decision
- Purchase
Most of the customers are belong to one of the above-mentioned phases. In order to motivate that customer to convert you need to provide them with valuable information which actually answers their queries.
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Address customer’s pain points:
Addressing potential customers pain points is also an effective technique to gain yourself the attention you are seeking in this world of search engines. Addressing and catering to the problems of your targeted customers has always been a great source of getting yourself qualified traffic. SEO is not anymore about putting up useless content stuffed with keywords, rather it is about providing meaning in a quality manner. The market research and communication with the customers is a great source of identifying the user problems which you can address through your content in an effective manner.
For example, Spectrum knows better know about the problems of their customers due to their effective customer service. They can address those pain points utilizing the data which, in turn, will help the customers, not only them but the new potential customers as well.
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Making use of the search engine suggested queries:
The search engine suggested queries are also a great source of analyzing user search queries. They provide a better idea of the psychology of the targeted audience. They reflect user intent better than any other software or technique. Before google algorithms became sophisticated, a handful of short and precise keywords were used to gain traffic, which is why keywords were so crucial at that time.
Now that algorithms are able to identify the semantic and thematic meanings of the user search queries. People have become more conversational with their search queries which makes use of search engine queries an important part of the search engine optimization keyword research process.
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Make use of the videos and images:
Making use of interactive videos and images are always helpful in content marketing. It helps in really connecting with the audience and allows you to resonate with them on their level. Besides that, it also increases the understandability level. There is no such SEO strategy that doesn’t involve images and videos. Studies have shown that people process visual information 60,000 times better than that of the text. And not just any video or image but a meaningful one.
For example: If Cox communications show their internet and cable TV packages in some banner. It will provide readily available valuable information to the users.
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Sharable content:
You won’t want your content to just get a read but would rather want your reader to promote your content too. Sharing of your content provides a vote of confidence to your content piece and indicate that the reader personally couches for the content. Google takes the sharable content into great consideration and ranks your site accordingly which is why link building is an essential process of search engine optimization.
Before developing an SEO strategy for your platform, you have to get inside of your potential audience’s head to find out how they interact with the search engines. How do they put their queries into words? SEO is more about user intent rather than that of the techniques. I hope the article has helped you in understanding the psychology of SEO.
