What’s the secret to crafting a SEO-driven online marketing strategy? The answer is simple—a sense of empathy for your target market. Knowing what your audience wants is the key to being able to find and retain them.

Although SEO is foremost in people’s minds, you need to remember that it’s important to build your website for users rather than search engines. With that in mind, consider the three types of queries that people make on the internet:

• “Do Something” Queries – The user wants to do something, such as research or buy a product or locate a song to download.
• “Know Something” Queries  – The user requests information, such as the name of a local restaurant or what’s the best pizza in town.
• “Go Somewhere” Queries – The user wishes to go a particular website on the internet, such as a company’s website to check their store hours.
  

Search engines try to make certain that the websites appearing as search results are of value to you. Their entire function is to deliver relevant results. If they don’t do that, users become frustrated and dissatisfied. As each day passes, search engines get smarter and better able to deliver the most relevant results. With your website, it’s necessary to know what your target audience wants and whether you’re able to deliver it.

Over the years and the many changes and innovations that have taken place on the internet, people still use search engines the way they always have when they want answers or information:

• They create an inquiry on a search engine
• They click on a result that seems to best match their inquiry
• If the page doesn’t do what they wanted, they return to the search results and try again
• If that doesn’t work, they change the wording of their inquiry, hoping for a better result

Some Facts About Search Engines and Online Marketing

Without question, Google is at the head of the pack of search engines, as confirmed by a StatCounter Global Stats report that shows the top three search engines sending traffic worldwide are:

• Google: 90.62% of traffic
• Yahoo!: 3.78% of traffic
• Bing: 3.72% of traffic

With billions of searches taking place, companies obviously want to rank as highly as possible in internet searches. In fact, a Forrester report indicates that online marketing costs will approach nearly $77 billion in 2016 alone. Obviously, jostling for the best SEO ranking is highly competitive.

For any company wanting to maximize its SEO efforts, doesn’t it make sense to work with a marketing company that is an expert on how Google operates and how it continually changes? Dreamscape Marketing is an official Google Partner and we are proud of the fact that 15 of our staff members have Google certifications. To put that into perspective, most marketing companies have no more than one or two people with Google certifications.

Need to upgrade your SEO efforts? Take your online marketing to the next level by contacting Dreamscape Marketing at 800-571-8553.