When you know this, you can design your content around what they’re searching for and what you are promoting simultaneously.
Define Your Target Market
Everything starts with knowing exactly who your target market is. If you already have an audience, you can look at your analytics to find out who they are.
But, if you’re just getting started you may need to look to your competition to find out who their audience is so that you can start creating relevant content for them. You need to know how to find your target audience online, to discover their questions.
What Questions Do They Have?
When you find your target market, note the questions they ask. The question itself is a keyword phrase or long-tail keyword that can be expanded or broken down to help you discover even more keywords and more information for your audience. What are keywords? Read more information on yesterdays post about keywords and keyword phrases.
Each question can become fodder for content whether it’s a product or a blog post, plus you can use that question as the start for more keyword research. Remember to start keeping a keywords list.
What Are Their Problems?
Knowing your audience well means knowing what their problems are. When you know their problems, you can come up with a list of keywords and keyword phrases based on those problems and finding solutions to those problems. This is the whole point of your target market research.
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Use Predictive Search
Once you have a short list of keywords and keyword phrases you can plug them into Google Search. As you’re writing, notice the predictive text that starts appearing. Write down those phrases and keywords too and repeat the process.
Research Keywords
As you gather more search terms you want to perform more keyword research. Using Google AdWords Keyword Tool, you can get more information about the keywords and keyword phrases that you want to learn more about. You can find out which keywords are worth it to use to attract your target market. If you use these carefully, you will boost your traffic and improve SEO.
Join Groups Your Target Market Loves
Another way to find out keywords that you can use in your content and products is to join groups that your target market takes part in. When you join groups that your audience participates in, it helps you to get to know the audience better. Pay attention to the questions they ask because they are the key to finding keywords and knowing which are important to use.
Keep Your Emails Open for Responses
Another way to find out secret information about your audience is to keep your email open for responses in much the same way you keep your blog posts open for comments. This information will be so important for you moving forward so that you know what your target market is searching for.
When you focus on what your audience is searching for and what they need you’ll automatically create content that the search engines find and send your audience to.
The reason is that the search engine’s job is to send their users to relevant content. The relevancy of the content is totally dependent on what your audience wants and needs. When you put your focus there, you’ll find it a lot easier to create keyword rich SEO content that gets results.
Summary
As much as we all try to look for short cuts, you need to know your target market or audience. This is one part that you can't ignore. Work out who they are, then try to decide what they need to know, What are their problems and what questions would they ask to find a resolution. This should become your master list of keywords.
The big secret, is to think like your audience. You may well think you are your own target audience. Perhaps you went into your niche as you had problems too. But remember, you know more now than when you started. Think back to when you were a beginner. What did you need to know?
Let's Recap
Try and figure out who your target market are, and what they are searching for.
- Who are your audience or prospective audience? Use your analytics to find out who they are. Or your competitors. Create an audience avatar.
- What questions are your target audience asking? Start creating a database of the questions that they ask.
- What are their problems? You guessed it, start making a list.
- Between the questions and the problems lists, add to the database you started of the keywords and key phrases.
- Use Google predictive search to increase your keyword list.
- Now start researching your keywords. Are they worth creating content around?
- Look to join some groups and forums where your audience are. But don't be a stalker and don't be spammy. Be nice and helpful. Find out what they want to know.
- Use your email lists to ask and answer questions too.
- Build up a target audience story board. It will be helpful.
Any comments or questions, please enter them in the comment box below. Speak soon.
If you missed the welcome post from day 1, go back and read it here.
