How to Write Relevant Content by Understanding Search Behaviors

Content and relevant information are king. We all heard marketing experts say if you want to attract visitors, you should provide relevant content. Even Google itself says so in its Webmaster guidelines. Let’s face it. Web users, both the consumer and the business kinds, are all after a single thing when using their search engines: information. So it makes good sense to give them exactly what they want. You’ll achieve your SEO goals fasters, while retaining visitor loyalty at the same time.

Knowing what web users do is the key to attracting them to your site. You have essentially two challenges:

1. To be found by information seekers, and once found,
2. To attract and retain them.

While we can follow a number of steps to address each of these challenges separately, there are things we can do that benefit both, killing 2 birds with one stone, so to speak. Let’s look at some key behaviors of typical web visitors:

• Web users are information hounds. Because of the speed and convenient of the Internet, information is always at the users’ fingertips – both good and bad information. So give lots of information, and differentiate yourself from the amateurs with great quality content.
• Web users are analytical. While the fingers are clicking, the minds are on high level of awareness and working overtime. There are only two kinds of visitors that matter to you. One is the browsers who want something but not sure exactly what. The other is those on a mission to find exactly what they want at the best deal they can get. Either way, the web users are actively analyzing the content they find.
• Web users are impatient and critical. Because of the available choices and the speed available to get to those choices, web users have been trained to be impatient. If they can’t find what they want, they’ll just move on to the next provider. 
• Web users scan content. They don’t read content. Web users know there may be better choices out there waiting for them to discover, and their impatience kicks in. Web users are fast scanners. So if your content is thousands of words long and contains just fluff in the first paragraph, or requires 3-4 paragraphs to lay out your case, then you’re losing readers fast.
• Web users don’t like to be sold. Sales pitches are so old school. You and I don’t like to be sold, we like to decide for ourselves. So consider dropping the aggressive spiel. 

If you stop and think about it, these are exactly our own behaviors, aren’t they? It’s pretty easy to understand and all you have to do is focus your efforts on what many call “inbound marketing” instead.

So what do we do with these behaviors? The best thing to do is addressing them head-on. Marketers have a single goal which is to sell something. But amateur marketers don’t realize that it’s very easy to fall into the selling mode trap. It takes more effort, but with much more effective results, to attract attention through a good combination of relevant information and great value proposition. The sales process will follow naturally.

Here are a few tips on writing relevant content.

1. Define your topic clearly and early in your content. This gets you found in relevant searches above your competitors, and lets visitors know immediately that they are in the right place with the right information, effectively answering their key question: “Am I in the right place?”
2. Keep your content short and to the point. If you have a lot to say on the subject, break them into sections, bulleted lists, or even series of articles. This does 2 things: a) it answers quickly the visitor’s question “is there something for me here?” and b) facilitates their tendency to scan your content.
3. Drop the use of teasers and fluff. I’m never a fan of teasers. They waste my time and indicate to me that the website has nothing to offer me. If you have to read through paragraphs after paragraphs of copy, and at the end still have to take additional actions with the promise of receiving the information sought, wouldn’t you feel cheated? So take the direct approach, don’t play around and make the content easy to get to.

The bottom line: consider how your visitors like to consume content and present your information to benefit their search. In the end, if your content is relevant with clear value proposition, you’ll reduce your bounce rate without resorting to sneaky tactics.

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Tags: Inbound Marketing, relevant content, SEO, web content