Target Your Content & Keywords to Your Market

 

Content is King so here are some royal words of content wisdom to help you target your market.

 

Using Adwords Ads to Influence Organic Snippet Content

 

The content of an Adwords ad and the content of an Organic Snippet have historically been polar opposites in structure and content.  Looking past the fact that Google may rewrite your Snippet as they see fit; attempting to lift from the content what is most relevant to the query; we can still, however, use some of the tricks and tactics that Adwords ad-writers and managers utilize on a daily basis and which have been nearly perfected over the years. 

 

Ad-writing is both art and science and there are features that can provide the click-through-rate (CTR) increases that Adwords are notorious for.  These include great calls-to-action (CTA), urgency keywords, benefits, and more.  CTA’s are so rarely found in Snippets or Meta Descriptions but they’re ubiquitous in Adwords ads.  By including a solid CTA in your Snippet you may find your CTR heading upwards along with you rankings.  These can include “buy now and save” or “see our great selection”.  Urgency keywords are ones like “buy now” or “sale ends soon”.  Urgency terms that define specific dates can be hard to include because you don’t control when Google will index your page and that time-related urgency CTA may be over and done with by the time they do.  Make sure you fetch your pages if any are out of date and make sure you include some kind of legal statement that protects you from complaints of misleading or bait-and-switch.  Benefits should also be included in your Snippet as much as possible as they’re great food for click-throughs.  Feature the benefits of “free shipping”, “extended warranty” or any other great benefits you can offer. 

 

Although Google may rewrite your snippet to match the query, you can somewhat influence or control this by first defining your market and then defining the keywords that they’re likely to search on, or those keywords that you want traffic from, and include them within the content. 

 

Here’s some information from Google on things that are good to include in an Adwords Ad:

 

https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/6080580?rd=1

 

 

Define Your Market & Product

 

Whether you sell vintage bass guitars or Ferraris, you still have a specific niche of potential clientele.  Define your market by defining the characteristics of those who would use and, more importantly, purchase your products.

 

Determining who your market is can be one of the best things you can do in general for your business.  To do this you’ll want to get into the demographics of your audience.  It will be important to know what their average income is, what their average age and sex are, where they live (city, suburbs, country), and a host of other things.  This data will help you to define places you can advertise and can even affect the “voice” you use when you write and the images you use and the people you attract or attach to Socially.

 

In writing content to target your market you’ll want to figure out what the keywords are which specifically relate to your products.  If it’s vintage bass guitars then you’ll want to research the terms which are most “important” to your market.  Start by asking questions such as “why do people love vintage instruments”? 

 

What is most important is definitely not going to be how “new” they are or “how state-of-the-art” they are.  It’s going to be more about how “classic” they are and now you get into the reasons that people buy vintage instruments.  Is it that “classic sound”, is it the “classic workmanship” or the materials used?  What are the benefits of vintage over new?  This is where you hop online and do some research.

 

 

Research Your Market & Product

 

There’s no end to the sources you can tap for very valuable information on the benefits of your product within your market.    This information not only will increase your knowledge of your products and market but will also help you define your target keywords and it can greatly influence your content. For example you can interview different musicians and the companies who made the original vintage instruments and create great viral content to market socially.  Let’s say you do some research and find that the benefits to vintage guitars include higher-quality construction with better materials which were put together by hand in America versus new guitars which often have lower-quality construction using lesser-quality materials which were machine made in Mexico, Korea or China.  Talking to some musicians who are well known and who know well the benefits of vintage guitars may tell you that the pickups used have a different or better or unique sound which can’t be found in modern versions.  Now you have some ammo for your campaign.

 

So we’ve defined some keywords that people will use to find us; being “American-made”, “vintage pickups”, “Jeff Beck’s favorite guitar”, “classic sound”, “used on such and such song or album”, etc.

 

 

Know Thy Competition

 

Next you’ll want to determine who your competition is and this is a two-fold venture.  You’ll want to define your business’ competition and your products’ competition.  The first means you search for your keywords, geo-target, etc and find the companies you compete with and review what they’re doing.  They’re obviously ranking well, because you found them, so what in fact are they doing, what keywords are they using, what calls-to-action are the going with, what deals and add-ons and extra benefits are they offering?

 

As for your products’ competition; look at the price of your products and find others in that price range or search based on features and benefits.  If your vintage guitar is a Fender Bass then you’ll want to see what other basses in that range are its competition.

 

Here’s a great example of a “vintage Fender bass” page which may be your competition: 

 

http://www.zzounds.com/item--FEN0191030

 

Here you can see that they promote certain features in key points of content including a well-written product heading, a great subheading, nice description and a side-bar with more descriptive features and benefits.

 

Product Heading: Fender '74 American Vintage Jazz Electric Bass, Rosewood Fingerboard with Case, 3-Color Sunburst

Product Subheading:  Capture that funky '70s vibe with this distinctive J Bass. The '74 American Vintage model sports details like white binding, pearl block inlays, and more.

 

 

Product Description

 

The Fender '74 American Vintage Jazz Bass with Rosewood Fingerboard captures that classic funky 70's style, tone and vibe with white binding, pearl block inlays and American Vintage '74 Jazz bass pickups. The pickups provide outstanding clarity for dynamic response and a versatile tone. The classic 'F' stamped bridge cover, pickup cover and thumb rest give this Fender J bass undeniable mojo.

 

(There’s more that we’re not including so we urge you to click over to the page and view it and the side-bar content).

 

Now this bass is running at $2,399.  Let’s make it a range of $2,000 to $3,000 and now let’s hit the top music stores online to see what you can buy for that same amount of money.  Then compare the features.  Create a chart that lists the features of each and compare them side by side.  This you can also use on your website while including the keywords of the basses that your audience may be searching for.  You may include keywords such as “new versus vintage bass guitars” or “bass guitar buyer’s guide and comparison” or “buying bass guitars for $2,000 to $3,000”.  Using your competitors’ successful strategies, keywords and content ideas can help you to increase your ranking while using your products’ competitors can help you to attract some potential converts; people who have the budget to buy your bass but who were originally looking for a new bass and who now may consider going with a vintage bass since they’ve seen your handy and convincing chart, and read the interviews you did with the bass manufacturers and well known bass guitarists.

 

 

Now let’s look for the extra edge or advantage

 

What are the other terms people use to differentiate the sites they’re looking for?  Many use terms like “cheap”, “free-shipping”, and “warranty” to help target sites with better deals, benefits or support. 

 

When you look at your competitors who are selling the same or a similar product in the same price range then it will be the other benefits that will help to close the deal.  Do you have customer testimonials, a better package or pricing deal (e.g. get free strings or buy now and get 30% off your next purchase) or some other benefits like “free shipping” or “extended warranty with free shipping for repairs”.  These will be the things you’ll want to include both in your content (giving you the keywords and calls-to-action) and in your purchasing or conversion process (promoting it in popup ads or again on the cart page, etc.).  Take the best of them and include them in your Meta Description so it will hopefully be put in the Snippet. 

 

When faced with an apples to apples comparison it’s going to be the quality of the brand, the bonuses, the user comments, the extra deals and incentives that will get your visitor to convert to a customer and it’s these same keywords that will get you in front of their eyes when they put in “American Vintage Fender Bass best deal”.

 

 

 

Exclude People (Did I just say that ?!?)

 

 

Now we want to look at the market you don’t want.  Many will think that excluding people will be counter-productive and counter-intuitive but it can actually help you by tailoring your site and content to the specifics of your real market and not diluting your traffic and statistics/analytics with the wrong people.  So who would our audience NOT be?

People who just started learning the bass guitar and people who play drums aren’t going to be your target market.  People who don’t have upwards of $2,000 to spend on their next bass guitar likely won’t be.  How do you translate this into limiting their finding and clicking on you?  Figure out the terms they will use and don’t use them.  You’re not going to want to focus your content on “cheap guitars” or “guitars under $100” or “best Chinese Fender knock-offs”.  These seem obvious but what about excluding terms like “great for a first bass” or “for starters” or “practice bass”.  These things in the content can become keywords that are searched for.  You’re also trying to tell the Search Engines that you’re not related to these because of their exclusion. 

 

 

 

Launch, Track & Change

 

So now you’ve updated your Meta Description, Title, Content, and have fresh new content for onsite and Social promotion. 

 

Now track your rankings on the pages you’ve changed (using your new keyword list) and track traffic, bounce rate, time-on-site, conversions and more to see how well that page is doing versus a period prior to launch. 

 

Never be afraid to go back and update existing content – it’s not always about creating new content.

 

Best of luck!