Keyword Optimization and Knowledge Levels
When choosing keywords to optimize for, you need to first consider how people are going to find your site and what they’re going to expect. If you were looking for a similar site, what words and phrases would you use? You can also check keyword rankings, search density and search volume. This will give you an idea of the keywords that people tend to use, how often they run those searches, and much else. Combining your industry knowledge and understanding of potential searches with the hard data on search frequency can help you determine what words are going to be the best fit and create the most traffic.
All that being said, there is one other thing you want to consider: the level of knowledge that your audience has. What you may find is that this is not the same from one user to another. This could mean that you need to target keywords for both audiences: the one that is well-educated on the topic, with in-depth knowledge, and the one that has very little former knowledge and is merely looking to learn more.
A Difference in Jargon
The reason that knowledge matters is that it can change the jargon that a person uses. This, in turn, can change what they think of as a “natural” keyword to use.
For instance, say that you run an online business selling musical equipment, and most of it revolves around guitars. Someone who is just thinking about learning to play and has never actually done so before may know that electric guitars have pickups, and they could search for the “best pickups” for whatever type of music they like to play. However, someone who already plays the guitar will know that pickups are divided into categories, such as humbuckers and single-coils. They may search for those more specific terms, rather than searching for pickups in general.
Do You Need to Pick One Audience?
There are certainly cases in which you may want to pick one audience or the other. If you sell complex, high-level equipment — and perhaps not just in the music space — then you may spend more time targeting an audience with a high level of knowledge and understanding. Someone without that may not need what you sell anyway.
But, in most cases, you can optimize for both. The keywords aimed at a more general audience are more generic and likely to have more competition — but they’re also going to see more overall searches every day. The keywords aimed at a specific audience may get far fewer daily searches, but your site may draw in a higher percentage of traffic if it offers just what they need.
Getting Started
Knowing how to optimize for your audience is critical. We have decades of combined experience here at Content Customs, and we can use that to help every step of the way. Call now.
