Beyond Keywords: Exploring Behavioural Research

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

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

The difference between keyword research and behaviouralresearch is that keyword research keeps us in a rather technical modeand focused on finding out what words people are entering whilesearching. Behavioural research has the added advantage ofenlightenment and understanding that not only reveals what keywordphrases are being used, but also why those keywords are being used.

Give this some careful thought. What could possibly be moreimportant than getting inside the head of your target audience anddiscovering what they really want? Actually nothing! Once we understandexactly what someone is looking for, we can give them exactly what theywant. Think "behaviour." Every day, people around the world use theInternet as a tool for a vast array of purposes. A study of behaviourscan carry you much deeper into understanding the desires of your targetaudience and ultimately, an understanding of what kind of usefulcontent 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 possiblepicture of what your customer REALLY wants, what they really are doing,by simply studying their searching behaviour on the major searchengines.

Why make all this fuss about behaviour trends anyway? Whatcreates behavioural trends? Think about it this way. If you candiscover how a certain target audience is using the Internet, thenchances are the rest of your target audience may be doing exactly thesame thing. This is not only helpful with respect to the ideal keywordphrase selection but also may be helpful to your writing style. How youcommunicate to a grandmother will have a completely different spin thanhow you communicate with a sports enthusiast looking for sports scoresor a photographer searching for a place to review
several different lenses.

If you happened to learn that a grandmother is shopping onlineto buy a gift for her daughter's newborn baby, then what are thechances of there being many other grandmothers doing exactly the samething. If enough grandmothers are doing this in real life every
day, it creates a trend.

So lets get down to talking a bit about behaviours.

Some people have already realized that online consumers aresearching for price comparisons online. Wouldn't it be useful to knowexactly what prices or what products people are comparing? How easilyyou could you take advantage of this information, by creating idealcontent within a retail site, that offers exactly what these people aresearching for and want to know! Not only that, but suppose you couldresearch those exact products and determine fairly quickly where thebiggest "window of opportunity" would be for you?

One of the most powerful and useful tools for researchinghuman behaviour is Wordtracker.com. As an official member ofWordtracker's question and answer support team, I help answer peoplesquestions about keyword research every day. The questions I answer aremostly things that customers are curious about, but often the answer totheir question does not allow me the time to explain about some of thespecial advantages of Wordtracker. This is why I wrote an book calledWordtracker Magic. To help people understand some simple, easyalternatives to performing keyword research and behavioural research.Many people miss the behavioural trends simply because they arethinking too narrowly about "keywords" which may already bepre-programmed into their minds.

Remember, if there is enough common interest in any topic, sothat a similar search behaviour is occurring then it will often leavean identifiable trend behind in Wordtrackers database. Every time youcan discover those trends, it's like discovering pure gold!

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