Exploring Beyond Keywords Into Behavioral Research by John Alexander

Exploring Beyond Keywords Into Behavioral Research by John Alexander

If you have ever studied search engine optimization, then you'll
know that most educators place tremendous importance on
performing good keyword research. After all, it's true that we
need to optimize our pages for the best phrases, or we will never
realize our true traffic potential. It's all about trying to
attract the ideal audience of searchers to our Web site, right?
Is that not what most of people do? They build a Web site
offering their business services, then they say to themselves
"How do I get traffic to my site?" For many Web site owners,
their source of traffic is an after-thought.

It's much wiser, to first try and discover what keyword phrases
people are searching for on the major search engines and then
optimize Web content for those specific phrases. However, there
are still further regions to explore that go beyond keyword
research. Let's call it researching the "behavior" of your target
audience.

The difference between keyword research and behavioral research
is that keyword research keeps us in a rather technical mode and
focused on finding out what words people are entering while
searching. Behavioral research has the added advantage of
enlightenment and understanding that not only reveals what
keyword phrases are being used, but why those keywords are being
used.

Give this some careful thought. What could possibly be more
important than getting inside the head of your target audience
and discovering what they really want? Actually nothing! Once we
understand exactly what someone is looking for, we can give them
exactly what they want. Think "behavior." Every day, people
around the world use the Internet as a tool for a vast array of
purposes. A study of behaviors can carry you much deeper into
understanding the desires of your target audience and ultimately,
an understanding of what kind of useful content to provide for
them.

While most people are thinking about what keywords to use, try to
expand your scope to focus and discover the fullest possible
picture of what your customer REALLY wants, what they really are
doing, by simply studying their searching behavior on the major
search engines.

Why make all this fuss about behavior trends anyway? What creates
behavioral trends? Think about it this way. If you can discover
how a certain target audience is using the Internet, then chances
are the rest of your target audience may be doing exactly the
same thing. This is not only helpful with respect to the ideal
keyword phrase selection but also may be helpful to your writing
style. How you communicate to a grandmother will have a
completely different spin than how you communicate with a sports
enthusiast looking for sports scores or a photographer searching
for a place to review several different lenses.

If you happened to learn that a grandmother is shopping online to
buy a gift for her daughters newborn baby, then what are the
chances of there being many other grandmothers doing the same
thing. If enough grandmothers are doing this in real life every
day, it creates a trend.

So lets get down to talking about behaviors then.

Some people have already realized that online consumers are
searching for price comparisons online. Wouldn't it be useful to
know exactly what prices or what products people are comparing?
How easily you could you take advantage of this information by
creating ideal content within a retail site, that compares
exactly these things that people are searching for and want to
know! Not only that, but suppose you could research those exact
products and determine fairly quickly where the biggest "window
of opportunity" would be for you?

One of the most powerful and useful tools for researching human
behavior is Wordtracker.com. As an official member of
Wordtracker's question and answer support team, I help answer
peoples questions about keyword research every day. The questions
I answer are mostly things that customers are curious about, but
often the answer to their question does not allow me the time to
explain about some of the special advantages of Wordtracker. This
is why I wrote an e-book called Wordtracker Magic, to help people
understand some simple, easy alternatives to performing keyword
research and behavioral research. Many people miss the behavioral
trends simply because they are thinking too narrowly about
"keywords" which may already be pre-programmed into their minds.
Remember, if there is enough common interest in any topic, so
that a similar search behavior is occurring then it will often
leave an identifiable trend behind in Wordtrackers database.
Every time you can discover those trends, it's like pure gold!

About the Author
John Alexander is the Co-Director of Training of Search Engine
Workshops with Robin Nobles. Together, they teach 2-day beginner,
3-day advanced, and 5-day all-inclusive "hands on" search engine
marketing workshops in locations across the globe. John also
teaches online search engine marketing courses through
http://www.onlinewebtraining.com, and hes a member of
Wordtrackers official question support team.