In a blog post SEOmoz published today, “Great Content for SEO: Simpler than You Ever Imagined,” Rand Fishkin supplies readers with a huge relief: “a simple yet massively powerful process for building search-optimized, ‘great content.’” Fishkin lets us know straight out of the gate that while this may not be a new process, it is one that isn’t being used to it’s full potential by most organizations, so it could give SEO pros a competitive edge. And who would turn down a competitive edge?
Essentially what Fishkin suggests is going straight to the source: ask your searchers what kind of information they want when they sit down to search. In his post, Fishkin shows a specific example where he built a survey, asked his Twitter followers to fill out the survey, and compiled their suggestions. He used that list to explain how he could build his site and site content around what his customers (or potential customers) are looking for.
Now you may be asking yourself, “Why are you telling me this? Obviously I should build my content around what my users want. This isn’t new.” You’d be right because the basic idea behind Fishkin’s post is by no means new. However, as he mentions, it’s such a simple tactic that it’s being overlooked by some SEO professionals. If you are finding that your traffic is down or your bounce rates are higher than you’d like, give this concept a try and re-connect with your users!
As always, we would love to hear about your experiences, past or present, with tailoring your content to your users, or what you think about using this tactic to freshen up your site content. Post your ideas below in the comments section!
For further information about this topic, check out the following links:
- ‘Ewe’tilizing Silos: Help Your Pages Rank Higher-SEO Boy (this article can help you manage your new user-supplied content in a way that is user and search engine friendly)
- How User-Friendliness and Content Influence the Search Engines-SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more news updates from SEO Boy!
Kayla is an Account Executive at Hanapin Marketing, a search engine marketing firm focused on generating results through PPC and SEO.
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