Increase your Conversions by Analysing your Audience

After facilitating hundreds of corporate SEO campaigns, here is what I’ve learned. Use this information for more effective brand messaging and outreach by analysing your audience.

After 5 years of working in the search engine optimization market, I’ve got a pretty good understanding of what works, and what does not work when it comes to leveraging your existing online properties and resources.

I have had the privilege of working with one-person marketing teams, and full-blown massive enterprise-level organisations –and in just about every single case we’ve been able to help brands punch above their weight class, so to speak.

In a lot of these cases it wasn’t about taking on shiny new campaigns or spending marketing budget dollars on the next hot social media fad; I was able to help my clients leverage existing infrastructure.

Not every year is a spending year, to the dismay of your local “social media rock star” –so let’s take a step back and look at how you can ring out more conversions with your existing audience.

How to Leverage Existing Audiences for More Conversions

1. The Content Myth

The answer does not lay in a new solution; gaining more conversions from your current online traffic can happen from going whole-hog and creating a flurry of content but it isn’t necessarily the only way to do so. Well, not without proper planning anyway.

Before creating new content always be sure to be honest with yourself and do not succumb to sentencing yourself to a life of costly, unfocused content production.

Ask yourself why. Why do you need more content? What is the goal of that content? Money, right?

If you want to rank higher in popular search engines or acquire more traffic, new content is always in season. However, it needn’t be considered a “silver bullet” which will solve all your problems. There is no one-size fits all content solution; content for “everybody” is merely content for nobody. So stay focused on each article.

What is the purpose of your article? Who does it speak to? Is it specific enough to likely attract a conversion?

2. Analyse, Measure, and Verify

The only way you are going to write good content that attracts conversions is if you analyse your audience with a fine-tooth comb. Who are they? What do they need?

Analytics

So if writing “good” content is all about targeting the appropriate audience, then it would probably be a novel idea to see what existing content you own is bringing in the most converting traffic. This is something that Digital Search Group is really proficient in.

To achieve this:

Hop into Google Analytics, assuming it’s been setup for awhile, and add a new segment and set conditions. Find a specific goal and change to 1+ per session.

At this point you’ll be able to use the Google Analytics demographics function to take a deep dive into that segment. Take note of the age, gender, location, devices used, and other factors including their personal interests.

You can do this for groups of pages to help you gain a better understanding of which content you are producing that results in conversions. In addition to that, you can also scour which websites are creating referral traffic for your website which results in a “goal” completion (conversion). From there you’ll have a better idea of what content to continue producing.

3. Social Media

Applying that same concept to say, Twitter, will allow you to measure and verify what your Twitter audience is into.

For Twitter, there’s Followerwonk for measuring and classifying your followers. Even something as simple as a tag cloud can provide enough data to ensure that you continue to tailor content for this specific segment of your audience.

For Facebook page fans, there is Facebook’s own home-brewed Insights solution which can provide an even more meaningful perspective on what your “fans” are into. Rinse and repeat.

4. Local Search

There are also a number of technologies one can implement into their website that will provide a deeper look at existing traffic.

A local website search is a great way to observe what website visitors are looking for quite specifically. Using some of the most popular search phrases here as long-tail keywords in content will go a long way. Scan queries for questions relating to topics and write about the most popular ones.

5. Third Party Hacks

Google Search Autocomplete

Finally, it can be as simple as doing a Google search and not hitting the Enter key. Autocomplete is not only handy for web content seekers; it’s a great way to auto-complete your way to some new article content or headlines.

Also, do not be afraid to ask your readers questions through simple polls. Create a click-through simple questionnaire to find out more about your audience. For example; “Are you a world traveller?” followed up by “Which one of these articles seems the most interesting to you as a traveller?”

(For more help on this one, check out Travel SEO Services at www.digitalsearchgroup.co.uk) .

And of course, all of these concepts, albeit with a range of tools, can be used to monitor online website forums, competitor websites, competitor followers, and so on. Make it a point to always analyse your audience first before dispatching any new strategy whether it be on-page or off-page . It’s a smart move that will help you save a lot of time and money.