This SEO tip uses intelligence coming straight from the horse’s mouth – i.e. the source of the data is coming from Google itself – specifically Google Search Console.

Google Search Console, formerly part of Google WebMasters, is a toolset that offers quite a lot of insight into the way that Google’s search engine algorithms interact with your website – specifically your website’s content and the way that organic search traffic is arriving at your website. 

The idea behind this tip is to reverse engineer the search queries which are arriving at your website – and then tailor your content to the user intent behind those queries.

(Proviso: for this trick to work, you already need to have some traffic coming from organic search)

How do you decipher user intent?

In Google Search Console under Performance > Search Results you can see what queries are sending traffic to your website. The Queries tab provides a lot of intelligence. By skimming through the queries, you should immediately see some patterns of user search intent emerging. What you see is also an accurate reflection of your best content marketing work.

Here’s an example. We worked on a content marketing piece that compares two pieces of software for one of our clients. Through Google Search Console we can see which search queries led to that particular page, as seen below. (N.B. The red & blue boxes represent the two pieces of software that we were comparing directly in our piece of content.)

It’s clear from this set of data that we’re clearly covering the intent of those searching for a direct comparison between the two. However, our digging shouldn’t stop there. We’ve satisfied the user intent of these individuals, but there may be others that arrived at our page through search queries that may provide us with hints to improve our content.

In the above screenshot, which is taken from the same search queries list as the one before it, we can make a couple of interesting observations. Several individuals have searched for the comparison of the two pieces of software, but for a different use case than the one we covered in our content. There’s also a cohort of individuals looking for a 3-way comparison with another, newer product that’s come on the market.

Using this information, there are several paths we can take to improve traffic, and fulfill user intent in a more complete way. Firstly, we can improve the content of the original piece of content to cover these queries. Or, if appropriate, we can create a companion piece that would link directly to the existing one.

Based on this lesson, here’s a list of things to keep in mind when performing this exercise with your, or your clients’’, sites.

The following are guidelines, rather than rules but they’ve worked for us

1. First and foremost, make sure your content is answering the users’ search intent exactly. If you can expand your content to hit all aspects of that intent, so much the better.

2. Use MORE of the keywords that are being searched for within that content. Whilst expanding the content on the user search intent, drop a few more keywords around the search queries.

3. Add more images and use search phrases as part of the name of the image, and in the image alt and description.

4. If possible – add a YouTube video that is also tuned towards the users’ search intent. If it doesn’t exist – create it yourself!

5. Tune your H1 title to the search query which is generating the most hits in this case.

6. Tune your meta description and meta keywords to the user’s search intent. If there are missing keywords, try to include them.

7. Be prudent – don’t overstuff your content with keywords – just make sure you have killer content for the user’s search intent.

If you do this for both the content that is generating good CTRs and especially for that content which is not generating good CTRs, you should be able to get a very good organic traffic boost.

This won’t happen overnight of course, but working in conjunction with your other SEO efforts, you should see your organic traffic climbing steadily. We’ve seen instances where the organic traffic increased by more than 30% using these techniques.

As always, also work on retaining the increased traffic. Make it easy for your new visitors to subscribe to your email newsletter or at least follow you on social media. 

Hope this helps you out!

The post Growth hacking: Analyse user intent to see search traffic shoot (Updated 2021) appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

Setting up a Twitter Account

To open a new Twitter account for your company simply follow this step by step signup process. When that is done go to your profile settings and upload your logo as your profile picture and set up your Twitter background to match your corporate identity. Alternatively you can find a designer on sites like Behance or Dribble to design a custom background for you for a small fee.

 
In your bio section make sure that you write a short description about your company. Be as descriptive as possible and include keywords related to your product/service as this will make it easier for someone to follow you when searching for similar companies.
You can also include a link to your Facebook or Linkedin pages so that visitors will follow you on these sites as well. As an example, below is the profile description of Thenextweb.com
“International news on technology, business and culture. Follow specific channels in our Twitter lists. Find us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/thenextweb”
Note how they are using the keywords “news on technology” “business” and “culture” in their profile description.

Increasing the number of Followers on Twitter

After setting up your Twitter account now is the time to start following some people.
The easiest way to do this is to search for your competitors and filter their followers by choosing only those that you think would be interested in your products. Let’s say you sell digital cameras, you will follow only those people that in their profile included something related to photography.
Avoid following a lot of people at once since Twitter might suspend your account if you follow too many people at once. Do it gradually.
When you start following people, some will follow you back. This is the main aim of following people i.e. to increase the number of followers.
I’ve found out that roughly 15% – 25% of the people you follow will follow you back. I usually spend a couple of hours every week following people and then again once a week I un-follow those people that did not follow me back.
The tool below will make it easier for you to spot those that are either inactive for a very long time or did not follow you back:

This process is quite time consuming, however it is much better than using any automated tools like TweetAdder that will automatically follow users that mention specific keywords and un-follow those that didn’t follow you back.
You should scan each and every profile before following and making sure that it fits in your target audience rather than following everyone that simply mentions a specific keyword related to yours. This way there’s a better chance that those that follow you back are actually interested in your tweets.
Do this religiously – never stop this process. It is key to keep on building followers.

Sharing Updates on Twitter

Now that you know how to increase your followers, let’s move on to explore the idea of generating traffic to your site using your Twitter profile.
The way you craft your post is essential. Write out potential tweets a few different times and try to think about which one would actually make you want to click on it. Not all tweets are created equal, so ask yourself the following questions before posting:

– Can you add a picture to make your post stand out more?
– Are you really highlighting the most exciting aspect of your blog post/page?
– Are there any fellow Twitter users out there who might benefit from being tagged in the post? Will they give you more exposure if they retweeted?

Also keep in mind that people are on Twitter at different times throughout the day. This means that the time that you post updates is an important factor to reach a bigger audience.
According to this infographic, the best time to tweet updates is between 1-3pm EST during week days. However you should test and post updates at different times throughout the day and find the best time where people are clicking on the links that you’re sharing.

You can use a tool like Bitly to share your updates, as it will show you the number of clicks that you get from every update that you post.
In order to increase the traffic to your site you need to post updates such as your news articles or blog posts for your followers. The best way to do this is to schedule your updates using tools such as Hootsuite or Buffer.
You can also tweet the same updates in different times throughout the day as your followers won’t be on Twitter all the time. However, make sure that you space your updates by a couple of hours.
This is a technique that Guy Kawasaki uses to share tweets with his followers. He repeats the same tweets at different times throughout the day. This way he tweets more frequently which in turn gets him a gazillion followers.

Finally – Keep posting, keep testing

Twitter can get you a lot of good quality traffic that you will really need as a start-up trying to growth-hack your way to the top. But remember: in order to reach this goal you will need to keep at it and increase your followers every week. You should also use Twitter to test the different content that you write on your site or blog.
When you share content on Twitter, make sure that you analyse and find out which articles your followers are sharing. Then, write more of those.
The recipe is simple and you can do it without any huge investments. All you need is time and tenacity.

The post Growth hacking: How to use Twitter to drive Traffic to your site appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.