Getting return on your rankings? On Marketing Mag

How a query is structured can be as important as how many search for it. The words someone uses can indicate how close they are to buying or what level of information they need. Sometimes a general high traffic term is not the best if it is conversions you want.

In a paper called ‘A Taxonomy of Web Search‘ (PDF) that categorised search queries by the searcher’s intent into a number of groups, each indicating a different task. Matching your keyword strategy to customer intent instead of just looking for the words with the most volume is a powerful strategic tool when optimising for conversions.

In any organisation with a website, someone has received an email a little like this. It would have been sent from a Gmail address, and the letters ‘S E O’ are in the subject. The copy would mention whitehat, search, optimisation, link building and sometimes there would be a line a little like this: “Your site only ranks 12th for ‘keyword'”; ‘keyword’ being a single word that relates to your industry. There are a lot of variations on this theme, that try a lot of different approaches, but they all fail to make one point. Why is ranking for that one search term worth paying for? . . .

Read the full version of “Getting return on your rankings?” on MarketingMag.com.au