Remember that information is a very important point for understanding consumer behavior, and that you can (and should) use the stages of the customer’s journey map to understand it accurately. So let’s check the online channels and SEO to improve your business.
How To Understand Your Consumer’s Digital Behavior
- Produce Interactive Web Pages
Interactive content is an excellent resource for collecting data on consumer preferences, interests, and problems on the Internet. These materials are based on direct user interaction, in which you can answer questions and choose between several options, by clicking on the elements that the page provides.
- Analyze Their Movements Through Your Online Channels
The digital presence of a company depends directly on the quality of its online channels. And the most interesting thing is that absolutely all the movements of the users can be mapped and interpreted from specific software. Here are some of them, so that you can understand how the users of your website behave:
Google Analytics: Google platform to interpret web traffic, in which you will see the pages most visited by users and if they reach your domain by search engines, social networks, Email or others.
Google Search Console: in this tool you will see how your website has appeared in the largest search engine in the world, understanding which keywords bring traffic to your pages.
Hotjar: This software offers you heat maps and data panels so that you can see which areas and elements of your pages receive more and less clicks, so you will understand the profile of interest of the users.
Hubspot: It is an example of a Marketing and CRM automation tool, in which you can discover on which pages each user became a contact, providing their personal data.
Google PageSpeed Insights: If your users leave your website very often, the reason may be that your pages take too long to load. You can obtain these data in PageSpeed Insights.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics may be an exceptionally effective (and free) instrument accessible to the modern marketer. It is vital to have it on your company’s website. All you should do is open a Google account and enter your site data.
One of the most important metrics you should be looking at and measuring is Source. This is where your website traffic originated from. (i.e. search engine, paid ads, social media, etc.). To find it, just click Acquisition, then Overview, and you can see which sources are giving you the most traffic.
Google Analytics breaks down the traffic sources into 5 broad categories:
- Paid Search: traffic coming from Google Ads
- Organic Search: traffic coming via the search engines
- Referral: traffic from another website
- Direct: traffic typing your domain into the browser
- Social: traffic from social media
You can click each one to enter more details, such as: which social media is driving the most traffic to the web or the landing page link where they are getting the most, or for paid ads: which ad, what keyword or phrase is working better, etc.
Google Analytics also allows you to obtain more information about the behavior of your users such as: the days and hours they visit your site the most, the pages they visit the most, how long they stay, etc. We recommend that you take some time to explore the tool thoroughly.
Search Engine Optimization
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the practice of increasing the quality and quantity of a website traffic, as well as the exposure to your brand, through non-paid (organic) search engine results. In other words, it’s about understanding what people are searching for online, the answers they are seeking, the words they’re using, and the type of content they wish to consume.
An organic search result is the one that is earned through effective SEO, not paid for (advertising).
Nowadays, search engine results pages or SERPs are filled with both more advertising and more dynamic organic results formats than ever before. An example of dynamic organic results or SERP features are “People Also Ask…”
It is true that search engines make money from advertising. Their goal is to better solve searcher’s queries to keep searchers coming back, and to keep them on the SERPs longer. Does this mean that you must pay and spend a lot of money on advertising? Not quite.
While paid advertising, social media, and other online platforms can generate traffic to websites, the majority of online traffic is driven by search engines. Organic search results cover more digital areas, and receive way more clicks than paid advertisements. In a 2018 survey, of all searches in the United States only 2.8% of people clicked on paid advertisements. SEO is also one of the only online marketing channels that, when set up correctly, can continue to pay dividends over time.
It is also true that search engines are getting smarter, but they still need our help. Optimizing your website will help deliver better information to search engines so that your content can be properly indexed and displayed within search results.
Should you Hire an SEO Professional, Consultant, or Agency?
Depending on your budget, willingness to learn, and the complexity of your website, you could perform some basic SEO yourself. But if you end up looking for expert help. It is important to know that many agencies and consultants “provide SEO services”, but their quality can vary widely. Then you need to find someone to help you by analyzing the online channels and SEO tools.
White Hat vs Black Hat SEO
White hat SEO refers to SEO techniques, best practices, and strategies that abide by search engine rules, its primary focus to provide more value to people. Black hat SEO refers to techniques and strategies that attempt to spam/fool search engines. While black hat SEO can work, it puts websites at tremendous risk of being penalized and/or removed from search results (specially Google) due to ethical implications.
Penalized websites have bankrupted businesses. It’s just another reason to be very careful when choosing an SEO expert or agency.
Know Your Website/Customer’s Goals
Every website is different, so take the time to really understand a specific site’s business goals.
This will not only help you determine which areas of SEO you should focus on. It will also help you to create talking points for negotiating SEO projects with clients, agencies, etc.
You may have noticed that things like “ranking” and “traffic” weren’t on the KPIs list, and that’s intentional. SEO can help your website rank higher in search results and consequently drive more traffic to your website. There’s little use in ranking if no one is clicking through to your site, and there’s little use in increasing your traffic if that traffic isn’t accomplishing a larger business objective.
Online Channels and SEO accomplishes so much more than vanity metrics. When done well, it helps real businesses achieve real goals for their success.