Keyword research is the foundation of search engine optimization (SEO). Keyword rankings, as a means of tracking SEO progress is still big.

A few years ago, following a Google decision to ban use of the Adwords API to some big SEO tools software brands, there was a slight attempt of deviation keyword monitoring for SEO purposes. Google decided that some SEO tool companies were overusing or abusing their Google API to power their tools.

It was the time when the concept of Inbound Marketing was born. Many SEO celebrities began advocating for a non-keywords SEO world or for alternatives to measure SEO. This fad didn’t last long as most SEOs thought that, without keywords, it was much harder monitoring the fluctuations of rankings and organic traffic. Of course!

Keywords and keyphrases provide a compass that alerts you to your progress. They point you in the right direction, toward the fears and desires of your potential customers. Without carefully selecting your top keywords, your SEO becomes wobbly. Do not listen to advice saying keywords do not matter.

Keyword Research methodologies

I will make the assumption that that you have already done market research and know what your niche is. If you work in-house as part of a team you do of course already what products or services you should promote.

It’s important however to learn the keyword research process properly. These days, the best methodology is often referred by many experts as ‘topics research’, ‘topics targetting’ and ‘topics optimization’. This trend and new way to look at the semantics of keywords began with the arrival of the ‘Google Hummingbird‘ algorithm.

Keyword categories

Keywords can fall under one of the following categories:

• relevance
• specificity
• popularity
• competitiveness

On top, keywords can often be researched better when interlaced with adverbs, prepositions or adjectives. These being properties for the noun to be researched. For example: colour, type, model, location, time, audience age, origin… each of those when combined with a product, service or noun can unveil a whole pool of keyphrases, all of which should be taken into account when conducting keyword research, and depending on the business objectives, decide the degree of priority in the selection process.

There are three ways of conducting keyword research:

1. the traditional way, which what I’m going to cover on this post.,
2. the agile way, competitor analysis, kind of keyword-stealing way.
3. or both

Tip: Option 2 is handy for ‘on-the-fly’ keyword research if you just need to know what specific terms a competitors’.

high-ranking landing page targets. That tactic alone can take you straight to some good outcomes for your SEO

The Head, Body, and Tail

So, how do you analyze keyword phrases and how do you know it is the right keyword? As I mentioned earlier, since Hummingbird you do not need to worry much about targetting single keywords. Go and grab those that kind of belong to the same bucket (category).

The next thing to take into account is the number of words in the phrase. The more words there are, the better chance you have of ranking for that term. Four-word phrases are easier to rank for and bring you higher conversion rates than a single head or terms keyword.

Head keywords

There is a term for the single-word top keywords: the head. They are also often referred to as vanity keywords. These terms will return results from a multitude of industries, and they can be great for brand building if you manage to rank high for them.They are extremely competitive though.

This searcher that uses ‘Head’ terms is just starting their research into a topic. They haven’t yet found the information they need to make a final decision. This is often why they their conversion rates are not great.

Head      –       Body       –       Tail

Body keywords

One step narrower than the head terms are body keywords, often comprised of two terms, though they can be three words, and are still very high volume. Many people search using two terms. However, unless you are a well-known established business, you shouldn’t target these words exclusively. You need to find top keywords that entail are lower competition.

Longtail keywords

Your salvation lies in long tail keywords, especially if your site is new – those that contain four words or more. These keywords will help you connect with your target audiences pretty well.

In many ways these keyword pool is the one that feeds search engine algorithms like Rankbrain or AI technology like voice search recognition, which aim, among other things to efficiently match human intent.

When you add all longtail keywords in your niche together, these long phrases make up the majority of search terms. The only flaw with long tail keywords is that they may get only 100-1000 searches a month, often less. So the key is to properly research the questions asked by your target audience when doing the keyword research.

By finding out about these questions you can write targeted content that provides useful customer’s answer. This can really give you the edge over your competition if you bring it into your overall content strategy efforts as a coordinated plan to generate new leads.

I recommend you watch this WebCertainTV interview to Bill Hunt where Gemma asks key keyword research questions in the context of content marketing:

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx4k0XCdiPs [/embedyt]

Get started

So how do you get started? go to your preferred tool for keyword research, eg: Google Keyword planner

1. If you already have an Adwords account, head for Google Keyword Planner in the first place. It is fundamental to tap into this in-depth buyer analysis.
2. Start with a few head terms
3. add variations
4. add additional related keywords
5. add questions about the head keyword
6. add other informational phrases
7. click on the keyword ideas to find more top keywords

Why do you need to add so many keyword ideas?

The Google keyword planner tool can come up with more and better keyword and keyphrase ideas. The planner will only spit out variations of your original entry though. So, you will need to brainstorm quite thoroughly to come up with a variety of related terms your customers might be searching for. If you struggle with going beyond just a small group of keywords it may be because you don’t have a paying account with Adwords, so Google is then less likely to let you have keyword information for free.

Luckily, there are alternatives to Google Keyword Planner? The best for me, these days, is KW Finder, followed by Ahrefs. Both tools are premium though. KW Finder is a beginner-friendly tool that boasts a beautiful and easy-to-use interface. It’s probably the most user-friendly keyword research tool on the market these days. You can get a free account and start running queries in no time.

What shall I do with all the results?

I recommend that you systematically export all your targeted keyword results to excel. There you can better manage the different groups. If your niche is small you may be ok with just putting all your keywords onto a tab, create a table and then filter them by topics and add one extra column for the topic name. Add colours to make it easier to scan through them.

Make sure you have a process to eliminate the duplicates. As you go through the research and selection process, whether you just use one or several tools, you will like be exporting groups of keywords that contain keywords already used in other groups. Make sure you use the ‘remove duplicates’ function in excel, to end up with a unique list of keywords without duplicates.

If you have a complex and rather large topic you will want to add each unique topic entity onto a tab and then add groups on each tab to cater for the different subtopics, segments, locations, etc.

And lastly, if your remit if huge and happen to be running international keyword research for a large company with a multi-product bouquet in their portfolio, you may consider to use one sheet file for each country or location and then within it use the tabs, filters and colour grouping system to organize your keywords.

What is the end goal for each keyword finding?

The goal is to get to find out the real user intent for the keyword or keyphrase in question. If you manage to craft that and then build a content plan around that, you will multiply your chances for success with every topic pursued.

The most profitable keywords you will find are those that are very close to, but not exactly matching, what you sell. There will be many businesses clamoring for the top keywords. So, by choosing adjacent ones, you reduce your competition. Google Kw Planner will often help you find the topics you need to develop content around.

Keep digging into the process

 Think about:

• the uses of your product
• Ask yourself how they might impact the life of the person doing the searching.
• the actual intent behind the search query (keyword)
• the level of competition for the keywords you decide to target

Often you will come up with an ambiguous topic list for the same niche, but which could potentially target three different niche markets. This is where you need to be careful and engage the product owner into the process. For example take these there keywords:

• nutrition for toddlers
• feeding your infant
• and food for children

All three are about the same thing but it’s three very different queries with different user intents. Feeding your infant is much more generic than ‘nutrition for toddlers’ which is specific to toddlers. If you get this wrong and begin targetting something that’s just similar but not to do with your product, you will lose a lot of time and money.

Consider using personas

If you have trouble while you are brainstorming, there are some strategies that can be used to help. One is creating a buyer persona. This persona will include pertinent information about your customers. Think about things such as their average age, gender, and income. You should also add the hobbies, interests, and goals of your target market. Some industries have multiple buyer personas that you will need to focus on separately.

This kind of specialization is what will capture an audience for your sales pitch. You must become in touch with your base. Learn all about their needs to maximize your profits.

Seek for Commercial Intent

When you are looking for top keywords, you will want to make sure that they have commercial intent. Getting a high volume of traffic to your website is nice. However, that doesn’t ensure those impressions will become conversions. Use the search phrases that people who are ready to buy are using.

If you want to be sure you have picked a good word, look at the Adwords Suggested Bid. This will give you real-world data on the commercial intent of web surfers.  When you find the top business keywords coupled with informational keywords in your niche are, you will have mastered a very lucrative art form.

Tip: do not fall in the trap of thinking that every single keyword you target should deliver commercial ROI. Some of them could be driving in interest, backlinks and valuable traffic that may need special nurturing via an email list or a different lead-to-customer tactic.

Use non-mainstream keyword research tools

One of the best tips for coming up with long tail keywords is looking at the “searches related to…” section. This is typically located at the bottom of a basic search results page (SERP). This can be a goldmine of long tail keywords, and a free way to run keyword research for informational and questions queries to help you rank in ‘position 0’ type of results.

Or if you prefer something with a user interface, UberSuggest is another useful tool for coming up with top keywords, and it’s free. It takes your search term and adds every letter in the alphabet after it to give you many more results. This is a great way to really branch out in the diversity of your search terms. I often find that with the long tail terms and questions suggested by KW Finder it is more than enough to inform my strategy.

Answer The Public can also be a helpful keyword tool. You can enter broad search terms. Then, it will generate common questions that are searched related to that topic.

If you are truly stumped, head over to a forum website like Reddit. You will be able to find tons of honest and accurate opinions of any keyword you type in. This can help you realize where you are in the marketplace.

Keyword Competition

One of the last parts of the selection process is examining if the competition is already using that keyword. You want to see if it is likely that you will be able to get on the first page of search results. Pages that have more authority, generated by time and size of the site, will rank higher on search result pages. Google is simply tallying the votes for what its searchers are looking for.

This is where tools like Kw Finder really give you the edge to competitor analysis as you are able to see in real-time the level of domain authority needed to rank for specific terms or phrases, based on the domain that ranks N. 1 for each term.

Conclusion

Keyword research should be an essential component of your overall market research.

After learning about the keyword generation process, you should now have a list of lucrative top keywords. Now, use those terms in your website copy to bring searchers to your page. There are extensive guidelines to writing the perfect blog post and squeezing more out of your headlines.

The criteria to properly select and target your top keywords should include search volume, commercial intent, and organic SEO competition.

Keyword research, selection and targetting is still today a pivotal part of an SEO strategy and, in many ways, the bread and butter of SEO. Once you master keyword planning and targetting process, and build a content strategy around them, no doubt you’ll see an incredible jump in search engine traffic. You will also come to know your customers in a way your competition just can’t keep up with.

Take some time to read multiple perspectives so you can benefit from everyone’s experience. SEO is as much of a talent as a tool. And it’s a tool that you should now be ready to use.

I have mentioned several different keyword research tools in this article. There are many more out there. Using one of these options will help you set you ahead of your competition. It will also help you to get that coveted first-page spot. Please note that, based on your business and industry different keyword planners will work better for you. Do some research and go with the ones that you feel comfortable with.

The post A Step-by-Step Guide to effective keyword research appeared first on David Carralon.

The guys at KISS metrics have come up with an infographic (below) that captures perfectly the essential steps to follow to improve conversions on your website, using the CRE (Conversion Rate Experts) method. One of the products from Kiss metrics that I do  not hesitate to recommend is KISS Insights. I have been using this little jewel for two years on personal sites to gather information about visitors to some of my personal sites and it does a wonderful job at helping me understand website visitors. It is mentioned on the step 3 below:

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Last year I attended Le Web Conference in Paris for first time. This conference rocks! It is the largest European conference in the web marketplace. There is a place in there for a diverse range of audiences: inhouse marketers looking to keep abreast of Internet developments, digital marketers looking to learn new things and meet contacts, entrepreneurs looking to establish new partnerships and expand their business, start-ups looking to promote their ideas to potential audiences and business partners.

This year LeWeb 2011 expands onto a 3-day conference on 7, 8, and 9 December, and the theme is SOLOMO, which stands for Social-Local-Mobile.

Tickets are still going at €1490 until end of September. However if you are a freelance developer, a student or a startup, there is a special price for you. Read about it at the bottom of the registration page. Further, if you are a start-up and want to join the startup competition, the registration is open!

Some interesting figures:

• 3000 participants
• 60 countries
• 300 + journalists
• 50 partners
• hear and see the industry’s most known icons before you

I enjoyed this conference so much last year that I wrote a blog post covering the highlights of LeWeb’10 on the Youmoz section of SEOmoz, and a more detailed one on my own blog.

To get a better picture of what you will get at Le Web if you attend, watch Loic and Geraldine presenting LeWeb 2011:

The post Leweb 2011 Paris is nearly here appeared first on David Carralon.

The advice given is however applicable 100% to enterprise-level SEO. The three main areas that Matt proposes to work on are:

• Speed performance of your website
• Having good internal CMS practices
• Embracing social media marketing

He states that speed performance is only a slight factor in the algorithm, but it can affect ROI on your site, as web user tend to favour sites that are fast. He actually suggest minifying CSS and javascrip files.

With regards to the good internal CMS practices, Matt advises to have an organisation strategy in place that includes educating people on SEO and why it is there, but also ensuring that there is a good interlinking strategy in place with the right use of anchor text.

Lastly, Matts advises to pay attention to social media marketing as a great way to drive traffic to your site. He does not mention the social signals used by google for website rankings, but focuses on the add-value aspects of building great content and spread it using social media.

They are definitely three good pieces of advice for in-house SEOs that can put you in the right pace to improve and make your search marketing strategies more effective, don’t you think?

Image top right by Aramistech

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Google Instant is currently a fresh trending topic, so if you actually type ‘Google Instant’ in Google, you will see a cool blend of results that will give you an idea of the kind of excitement that’s going round about it at the moment.

You will likely see some of the most popular tweets, likely to be the most retweeted too:

Some news results from sources that are likely to be getting the most votes in terms of mentions, links, retweets or facebook likes:

Of course, some videos too:

I have read plenty of posts on Google Instant, its effects on searches and the various different sceptical or rather more optimistic opinions about how it affects SEO. Some sources are informative with plenty of factual data to look at, other more scientific ones are based on actual testing & analysis, and other posts seem to be putting into perspective the relationship between Google Instant, personalised search and the premise that Google is using user’s personal data to tailor the best results for them. I personally like this post and video, and this other one from Danny Sullivan, both being positive opinions that encourage SEOs to stop worrying about Google Instant and focus on their strategies.

Brett Tabke, from WebmasterWorld forums comments on a blog post from Steve Rubel, where he claims that with the arrival of Google Instant, SEO is dead:

It makes SEO INFINITELY more possible. SEO’s are licking their chops over this. We can now rank for ‘letters’ instead of just words. It opens the door to a whole new type of optimization.

Generally speaking, the consensus amongst SEOs seems that Google Instant will bring good new SEO opportunities for some and obviously some challenges for others, and Google Instant will in no way kill SEO. Like with every new change Google makes in either its ranking algorithm or user interface, some benefit from it while others get hit. I think it is much about how prepared an SEO is to adapt to the new environment and move forward with the new trends, invest enough time analysing your stats data, the new serps learn to play with the new toys.

My impresion of the new ‘feature’ is very positive from a user perspective, actually I quite like it, and that’s the goal that seems obvious for Google: to please the user. Users will seemingly be able to switch off this feature, which is always appreciated (but they say that Google plans to make it a default feature in future):

The SERPs for the sites that I manage either professionally or by hobby do not seem affected at all, though I have to admit I have not yet performed thorough analysis and compare data before and after Google Instant went live. I did actually performed the following search before and after: if I type the word ‘learn….’ in Google.fr, I get the following SERPs:

However, if I carry on typing ‘learn english’, the SERPs change radically to show two of the results that concern me:

Those results have stayed pretty much the same before and after Google Instant even when being logged to my Google account or change IP location in the same town. Like with personalised search, those sites that rank high and attract the most of the CTRs obviously stand much better chance to carry on boasting top positions as they’ll be favoured by users and their frequent click-throughs.

I do recognise though that any user with an intent to seek information to say, learn english, may get somehow distracted by the early serps shown before reaching the end of his/her intended keyphrase. That would effectively steal a potential user from my ‘learn english’ rankings, it can happen, but I trust that the user, in the quest, for better results, will eventually find my sites.

Until I am able to experience the opposite, I cannot say that SEO is dead or that Google Instant is badly affecting my long tail traffic specifically or my SEO in general. I admit though that I am curious to know whether the other international search engines will followsuit with the same idea.

Google Instant affects PPC though…

Lastly, just to say that as I found myself listening to a Strike Point podcasts in my way to work, I heard Dave Naylor, as he conversed with Mikkel deMib, make a very valid point about how Instant could affect Adwords advertisers’ interests. He explained how he feared that, with Google Instant, as the SERPs dynamically change throughout a given search term, particularly long tail phrases, Google will generate and actually count a higher number of page impressions. These additional page impressions will negatively affect the clickthrough rate for your ads and ultimately the overall Quality score for your campaign. I tend to agree that there is some risk for publishers there and an opportunity for financial gain by Google.

To illustrate the above, let’s imagine that I decided to buy the following three keywords ‘learn’, ‘learn english’ and ‘learn english online’, all three…. and every day 10 Google Instant users would type ‘learn english online’. each search would trigger 3 different results on the SERPs where my ads would be shown 3 times! Yet I would have only stand one single chance to gain one single click-through from each of the users. Result: my CTR for that adgroup would suffer and so my quality score… which means more cash into Google’s pocket!

so what’s your take on Google Instant? Can you figure out anyways in which it may affect your search marketing? have you noticed any declines in traffic since it went live?

The post Google instant search news and reactions from the SEO community appeared first on David Carralon.

It gets more complex if you happen to be managing multi-site search marketing campaigns across a region or continent and wondered how local users on the target countries actually visualise your paid or organic listings on the Google SERPS?

Even if you are simply running one or two search marketing campaigns, but find yourself in an alien location to the target location (country, region or city), you would find a tool like Google Global (target page removed by Firefox). There of course other more advanced tools that return ranking data in different locations but Google Global is very useful for quick visualisation of the SERPS, if you are using Firefox.

Google Global will allow you to set up us specific custom profiles for each of your target locations ( see below ) , so if say you are running two campaigns in parallel both in Brussels and Bruges, you will be able to define the local codes for those two cities/towns and even specify an IP address for the exact location where you would want to check the SERPs from.

Imagine you are in Milan, Italy, and one of your colleagues is in Dusseldorf, Germany. You can the configure the tool not only to see results from a Dusseldorf location perspective but also enter your colleagues’ IP address to view the SERPs in exactly the same manner as your colleague would see it.

The extension creators, Redfly, have made it easy for search marketers to use the tool by allowing access to data such as Google City Codes and standard Region Codes. In addition you can have the extension configure for many different locations across the global or a single region.

With one click over the  ‘Google global’ button on the Firefox browser you can quickly check the SERPs on any location around the globe.

The good news for those making the transition from Firefox onto another browser is that, the extension is also available for Google’s browser Chrome.

If you know other free tools that do the same job or better, please feel free to comment.

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I am on the participants list for ‘LeWeb’ 2010!

LeWeb event in Paris is one of the biggest Internet events in Europe. It has been selling out every year for the last 6 years with 2500 participants in 2009. It is aimed at all enthusiasts who take a deep interest in the web, web technologies, and the various opportunities it bringing us all.

After having missed this unique event for six consecutive years, I am making it this year attendance and am really looking forward to it. I bought my ticket early back in February on 50% reduction as an ‘Early bird’.

Every year there is a program theme for LeWeb. To date the program theme and agenda for 2010 is not yet decided. Last year’s theme was the ‘Real-time web’ and they spoke about Twitter & Facebook and their exponential growth in the previous year, reactions from Google, Microsoft and MySpace. They also spoke about opportunities for new entrepreneurs in the light of the ‘real-time web’, the many different applications being made available for iphone, Twitter, and facebook as well as the challenges it presents.

One other topic that was discussed last year, which I think it will also be popular this year is the ’free culture’ of the web and the challenges this presents for companies that need to get a return on the investment they make in offering free Internet services.

One other remarkable highlight of last year’s LeWeb event was the participation of Queen Rania Al Abdullah, from Jordan who spoke about how she had been using Social media for educational purposes and helping raise the need for every child around the world to be educated on the real-time web for real time change at the Le Web Conference – Paris December 10th, …

Like in all big events, there are official bloggers that ensure there is enough coverage during all sessions for everyone to be up-to-date with all ‘goings-on’ at LeWeb. Some of these official bloggers can be popular and successful European Search news blogs, such as Search cowboys.

To add to the standard agenda packed with scheduled events, there are usually some workshops running in parallel, and a ‘start-up’ competition usually sponsor by some online news player, TechCrunch did the job in 2009.

If you want to know a bit more about what’s going to happen this year at LeWeb, hear the Loic LeMur present LeWeb 2010 as the venue will be moved back to LesDocks, where it used to be done back in 2007:

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They have heard that social media seems to be the new SEO. So SEO appears to be dying and social media seems to be taking over and therefore social media marketing is taking over search engine optimisation (seo)….

I have been hearing his ‘SEO is dead’ fad ever since before last summer. The rumour spreaded out quite quickly in the organisation where I work as someone sent out a link to the website that tells about the book you see on the left. The same day I had more than 10 colleagues asking me what I thought about it, whether SEO was really out of the game. My answer was no at the time, and it still is today. So I have written this post to send the link to those who ask me in future.

For as long as at least one of the three points below are true, there will always be SEO, in my opinion:

• Search engines are like disabled users in many ways
• websites exist and need to be promoted
• relevancy and importance are two key ranking factors in the search engine algorithms

SEO and social media are perfectly compatible and they work best when they are working together. SEO is still young, but social media is younger, therefore if I had to choose I would likely alway give priority to investing in SEO. Of course every business is different and there may be times when the nature of the business dictates a social media inclination.

I am listing a few blog posts here to provide some background into the ‘SEO is dead’ story, so that you can then make your own conclusions:

Eric Enge from Stone Temple Consulting and also co-author of one of the best SEO books written recently: The Art of SEO
posted an article on SEW a few weeks ago titled: Is SEO Dying? How will it Evolve?. Eric kicks off his post by saying that many people don’t understand what SEO really is. He also explains why social cannot be taken as a unique way of determining importance (social votes) at least for now, and he uses the Twitter example: ‘what’s best a tweet or an authoritative link?‘

Recently Peter Davanzo made the following comment on a post he wrote for the SEOBook blog:

“People have been predicting the death of SEO since, well, the beginning of SEO”

The post Tired of the ‘seo is dead’ thing appeared first on David Carralon.

1. The SEO-friendly approach: if you work in ‘Search’, your approach will most definitely be this one, and the project will be led by the results of your initial keyword research for that website, so you will likely do the keyword research first and then model the data accordingly. If you are serious about it, you will probably run Pay-per-click campaigns too before you make keyword target decisions.  This is much my preferred approach, particularly if an ‘increase in sales’ is the ultimate goal for the project.

2. The product category-based approach: analysing the product range on offer and categorise it accorgingly. This is typically the product-based approach. It works in the same way when you offer services: organise your services and the information about those services logically and build the site architecture. A combination of the first and second approach can be quite a fire-sure way to end up with a strong and robust site architecture.

3.  The audience-targetting approach: imagine a situation where you would acknowledge your audiences at the beginning of the customer journey as what they are and who they are. You would segment your target audiences based on previous research and reflect the results of your audience knowledge on the website customer journeys, offers and navigation. You would address your visitors in a tailor way in order to be able to offer them customer journeys suited to who they are and what their actual needs are.

My practical, hands-on marketing experience on building Information Architecture started from working on Intranet development websites for a public sector organisation. I then moved onto development public websites. For many years, both my university tutors/lecturers and work colleagues and managers would think of option 3 as a big ‘no, no’. On another hand, option 1 was industry’s unknown territory  until about 2004, and it still is these days in many ways.

Therefore options 2 was the most common approach to IA. In fact. Number 3 would often be suggested by those colleagues who were non web savvy users as it would sound obvious to them to model content in a fashion where you would address your target audiences. But other teams (design, technical, business development, content architects) would pose strong opposition.  The main reason for this reaction would come in the form of something like this:

‘oh, we don’t really need to address our own audiences, they already know who they are, we just need to respond to their needs by offering in a compelling manner the products or services they are looking for‘….

For many years I bought in to that idea and for many years I preached on that too.

Today I still think Option 2 is a fairly good approach to IA, but not the only one and certainly not always the most effective from a marketing performance and customer-focused standpoint.

Suddently, a book I read made me stretch my mind and position on this whole paradigm to do with IA and content modelling. I read one of the most influential books in my online marketing career: ‘The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly‘. In this book, David Meerman Scott, the author explains how important it is to address your real customers once they step into your website. Much in the same way as you would acknowledge someone that comes in to buy in your shop with a ‘good morning’ or ‘good afternoon’.

David challenges this whole myth about ‘product-based’ information organisation and prompts us to focus on the customer, who they are and their individual needs with the goal to tailor their search and offer them the exact products that are specific to their needs.

As I have only been doing consultancy outside my in-house SEO job for about two years, I have yet to see when I will be able to contemplate a client-based business model where I would be confortable offering such approach to Information Architecture. I am very keen on the idea that there has to be situations when a audience segmentation, customer-acknoledgement approach would beckon.

Only a few days ago,  I have learnt via Twitter about a conversion rate optimisation success story that highlights this IA methodology, the Voices.com success story by the guys at Conversion Rate Experts.

Through online visitor surveys and other online user research techniques, these guys identified that the client website had two distinct type of visitors, which were segmented into separate conversion funnels.

I don’t mean to say that this approach can be applied to all sites, but that it is clever to try it and see what results it brings you. If we don’t test different approaches, we will not know what is the best one for our specific online business model.  If you have a website where customers/visitors are not converting, perhaps it is the moment to address this issue from the root and take the customer-centric, audience-segmentation approach.What is your preferred approach to information architecture? …assuming your are given the task to re-organise content on a considerably large site, you have to take your preferred approach to organising all the information, which is likely to be complex and need categorisation of some form.

1. The SEO-friendly approach: if you are into SEO, your approach will most likely be led by the results of your initial keyword research for that website, so you will likely do the keyword research first and then model the data accordingly. If you are serious about it, you will likely run some Pay-per-click campaigns too before you make keyword target decisions.  This is much my preferred approach, particularly if ‘increase in sales’ is the ultimate goal for the project.

2. The product category-based approach: analysing the product range offer and categorise it accorgingly. This is typically the product-based approach. It works in the same way when you offer services: organise your services and the information about those services logically and build the site architecture.

3.  The audience-targetting approach: addressing your audiences at the beginning of the customer journey. You will perform a segmentation of your target audiences and reflect the results on the homepage to be able to offer them customer journey more tailored to who they are and possibly what their needs are.

My practical, hands-on marketing experience on Information architecture started from working on websites in the public sector, where for years, option 3 was a big no no. Option 1 was until about 2004, something not known due to lack of actual good practice in the industry.

Therefore the options were 2 and 3. Number 3 would scare everyone around and had strong opposition from nearly all colleagues in the web teams.  The main reason for this reaction would come in the form of something like this: ‘oh, we don’t really need to address our own audiences, they already know who they are, we just need to respond to their needs by offering in a compelling manner the products or services they are looking for’…. so for many years I bought in to that idea and for many years I preached on that too.

Today I still think it is a fairly good approach to IA, but not the only and certainly not always the most effective from a conversions rate optimisation angle.

A turning point event made me change my mind and position on this: the reading of one of the most influential books in my online marketing career: ‘The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly‘. In this book, David Meerman Scott, the author explains how important it is to address your real customers once they step into your website. Much in the same way as you would acknowledge someone that comes in to buy in your shop with a ‘good morning’ or ‘good afternoon’.

David challenges this whole myth about ‘product-based’ information organisation and prompts us to focus on the customer, who their are and their individual needs with the goal to tailor their search and offer them the exactly the products that are specific to their needs.

As I have only been doing consultancy outside my in-house SEO job for about two years, I have yet to see when I will be able to contemplate a client-based business model where I would be confortable offering such approach to information architecture. I am very keen on the idea that there has to be situations when a audience segmentation, customer-acknoledgement approach would beckon.

Only a few days ago,  I have learnt via Twitter about a conversion rate optimisation success story that highlights this IA methodology, the Voices.com success story by the guys at Conversion Rate Experts.

Through online visitor surveys and other online user research techniques, these guys identified that the client website had two distinct type of visitors, which were segmented into separate conversion funnels.

I don’t mean to say that this approach can be applied to all sites, but that it is clever to try it and see what results it brings you. If we don’t test different approaches, we will not know what is the best one for our specific online business model.  If you have a website where customers/visitors are not converting, perhaps it is the moment to address this issue from the root and take the customer-centric, audience-segmentation approach.What is your preferred approach to information architecture? …assuming your are given the task to re-organise content on a considerably large site, you have to take your preferred approach to organising all the information, which is likely to be complex and need categorisation of some form.

1. The SEO-friendly approach: if you are into SEO, your approach will most likely be led by the results of your initial keyword research for that website, so you will likely do the keyword research first and then model the data accordingly. If you are serious about it, you will likely run some Pay-per-click campaigns too before you make keyword target decisions.  This is much my preferred approach, particularly if ‘increase in sales’ is the ultimate goal for the project.

2. The product category-based approach: analysing the product range offer and categorise it accorgingly. This is typically the product-based approach. It works in the same way when you offer services: organise your services and the information about those services logically and build the site architecture.

3.  The audience-targetting approach: addressing your audiences at the beginning of the customer journey. You will perform a segmentation of your target audiences and reflect the results on the homepage to be able to offer them customer journey more tailored to who they are and possibly what their needs are.

My practical, hands-on marketing experience on Information architecture started from working on websites in the public sector, where for years, option 3 was a big no no. Option 1 was until about 2004, something not known due to lack of actual good practice in the industry.

Therefore the options were 2 and 3. Number 3 would scare everyone around and had strong opposition from nearly all colleagues in the web teams.  The main reason for this reaction would come in the form of something like this: ‘oh, we don’t really need to address our own audiences, they already know who they are, we just need to respond to their needs by offering in a compelling manner the products or services they are looking for’…. so for many years I bought in to that idea and for many years I preached on that too.

Today I still think it is a fairly good approach to IA, but not the only and certainly not always the most effective from a conversions rate optimisation angle.

A turning point event made me change my mind and position on this: the reading of one of the most influential books in my online marketing career: ‘The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly‘. In this book, David Meerman Scott, the author explains how important it is to address your real customers once they step into your website. Much in the same way as you would acknowledge someone that comes in to buy in your shop with a ‘good morning’ or ‘good afternoon’.

David challenges this whole myth about ‘product-based’ information organisation and prompts us to focus on the customer, who their are and their individual needs with the goal to tailor their search and offer them the exactly the products that are specific to their needs.

As I have only been doing consultancy outside my in-house SEO job for about two years, I have yet to see when I will be able to contemplate a client-based business model where I would be confortable offering such approach to information architecture. I am very keen on the idea that there has to be situations when a audience segmentation, customer-acknoledgement approach would beckon.

Only a few days ago,  I have learnt via Twitter about a conversion rate optimisation success story that highlights this IA methodology, the Voices.com success story by the guys at Conversion Rate Experts.

Through online visitor surveys and other online user research techniques, these guys identified that the client website had two distinct type of visitors, which were segmented into separate conversion funnels.

I don’t mean to say that this approach can be applied to all sites, but that it is clever to try it and see what results it brings you. If we don’t test different approaches, we will not know what is the best one for our specific online business model.  If you have a website where customers/visitors are not converting, perhaps it is the moment to address this issue from the root and take the customer-centric, audience-segmentation approach.

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