Getting to Know Your Audience

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From the course by University of California, Davis

Search Engine Optimization Fundamentals

987 ratings

University of California, Davis

Search Engine Optimization Fundamentals

987 ratings

Course 2 of 6 in the Specialization Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Gain an understanding of search engine algorithms and how they affect organic search results and websites. Building on this knowledge, you’ll learn the key elements for creating an effective SEO strategy, including how to select keywords and perform keyword research; consumer psychology and search behavior; and how to conduct on-page SEO analysis to identify opportunities to improve a website’s search optimization.

From the lesson

Keyword Theory & Research

Welcome to week 4! In this module, we are going to discover a variety of strategies for developing keywords for your site. This critical step is what helps direct your ideal buyer to the content that meets his or her needs. In the lessons that follow, we’ll learn about keyword theory and how understanding the common behaviors of web searchers can help you hone your list of keywords. We’ll also see how you can use a variety of SEO tools to conduct an audience and use this data to develop personas of your ideal buyer. Once you’ve completed this module, you should be able to craft a list of optimal keywords that will help get your site recognized.

Keyword Theory & Research Introduction0:55

Choosing the Right Keywords4:45

Stages of Search7:36

Heads, Tails, and Long Tail Keywords5:51

The Science of How Users Conduct Searches5:05

Getting to Know Your Audience6:01

Creating Your Ideal Buyers Persona6:00

Meet the Instructors

Rebekah May
SEO Manager & Lead SEO Instructor, Lead Qual
UC Davis Division of Continuing and Professional Education

These days there are a surplus of tools that can help you learn more about

the potential audience of your site.

From Google Trends to Alexa and Quantcast to Followerwonk and more.

Each tool can help you gather specific data about the geography and

habits of your site visitors.

In this lesson we'll consider specific audience data that can be derived

from several SEO tools.

And we'll explain how this data can help you sculpt your site's content and

marketing strategy.

Google Trends allows us to get insight into geographic data

which can really help us target appropriate keywords.

This can come in helpful for blog posts or

site resources that may generate a lot of social shares.

For example, when we look at regional interest for textbook rentals,

we see that the majority of searches come from the United States.

When we drill further, we can see which states have the highest search volume.

This might give you some great topic ideas for blog posts or

ideas to partner with colleges in the most popular states for link building purposes.

For example, you might create an infographic or

report about top subjects studied in Louisiana according to textbook rentals.

And then you can supply that report to colleges or

other outlets who are likely to publish it and link back to your site.

You can also get topic and keyword ideas from demographic data.

This data is a little more difficult to find and not completely reliable.

But it does provide you some additional insight into your or

your client's target market, and can help you optimize a website more effectively.

There are a few websites which provide data that you can take a look at,

such as Alexa and Quantcast.

You can also enable this feature within Google Analytics.

Using Alexa, we can see what they believe to be some of the top keyword traffic for

the site textbookrentals.com.

We can see variations of the keyword textbook rentals.

But also find that users are concerned with locating cheap textbook rentals.

Alexa also provides information on audience demographics.

For example if we look up other textbook rental sites,

we can see that some people have completed some level of college

which fits into what we know of the site's offering.

Also most people browse from home or work, but few browse at school.

This might provide insights into the type of content you can create

that will attract these users.

Once again this data is not entirely reliable, but

may lead you in some useful directions.

Alternatively SimilarWeb shows potential topics

visitors to the site may also be interested in.

If we were to start a blog,

some categories we might want to consider would be career related posts,

education related posts, and posts about books and literature.

From the topic cloud presented, we can get a good idea of popular key words used.

SimilarWeb also shows traffic sources,

which can give you a good idea of where and how to promote content.

When looking at channels other than direct or

search, we can see this audience responds to mail well,

which probably means newsletters are an effective medium to reach your audience.

We can also get some demographic data from social media.

Let's use Followerwonk as an example.

Followerwonk is a tool that allows you to analyze Twitter profiles,

followers, and bios among other features.

They have a great deal of information available for free.

And is also a part of a Moz subscription.

So if you have a membership there you can access more data by linking your accounts.

I'll be signed on through my Moz membership in order to show you

all of the data available.

I would say Followerwonk's data is pretty reliable

as it's taken from Twitter directly.

But that just means it's as reliable as Twitter is.

Also note that this does not mean that information you find here

can be applied to your entire target market

as this is only the portion of your target market which uses Twitter.

If you are marketing to senior citizens for example, chances are you won't find

a lot of information you need by analyzing Twitter profiles.

It's also important to keep in mind that not

every person on Twitter is a real person.

Many can be bots with fake profiles and false information.

Keep in mind that sometimes Followerwonk cannot alway identify follower gender.

This may be due to incomplete Twitter bios, bots or more.

So it's a good idea to compare several accounts within the same industry.

You can also view this nifty map of where followers are,

to get an idea of how active your target market is in certain areas.

This can be helpful when deciding on keyword choice due to

regional vocabulary differences as we will discuss in the next few slides

where we talk about creating buyer personas.

You should now be familiar with some tools you can use to gain more information

about your audience and potential topics that may be of interest to them.

In addition this might provide you with some ideas for content that your users

are likely to share with their followers, increasing your incoming links.

That completes the video portion of this lesson.

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