How can you tell if you’ve been “Googled”? How can you validate that you are using the right vocabulary to be found? You should ask yourself these questions because it’s proven that prospects will have completed 80% of their purchasing process by the time they contact you.
A frustrating situation
Your analytics dashboard used to show the phrases visitors googled to reach your website. But this hasn’t been the case for a while. The Google Analytics support site says:
“Google Analytics identifies the terms used to find your site through search engines, and displays these keywords (including phrases) in your reports. For Google organic searches, Google Analytics will generally show a keyword of (not provided) because all Google searches are secured via SSL, and search queries are not exposed.” Source
If the keywords of nearly 95% of organic visits cannot be displayed, what good is that?
How then can we identify search trends if we have nothing substantial to go on? How can we make sure that we are found when looked for? There is more needed here than all-round SEO optimization.
More than SEO
Indeed, the question begs us to look at the bigger picture. Keywords and their optimization (SEO), are only one of three elements that make up inbound marketing.
Certainly, using the right phrases when creating content for your website and your blog is important. The same goes for your brochures and other marketing and sales items. Finally, your outreach in social media should be part of the mix.
Ultimately, we want to know if your prospects are looking for a cat, a domestic feline or a Devon Rex. Going on this information, we can meet market demand and offer the right content to be indexed by search engines such as Google and increase the chances of detection by these prospects, to convert them into buyers.
Landing and tracking session paths on your site
Remember, you are sitting on a gold mine. Therefore, the first clues you can get come from digging through the visits to your landing pages. Apart from the home page, they are the first relevant pages visited by users. Analyze these pages’ themes and the concepts they contain. Keep in mind that they still have to be significant in statistical terms and in conversion.
More clues: follow the path taken by your visitors. From the landing or home page, the path taken by your prospects can give you and indication of what they are looking for.
The novice approach
Setting aside machine data for now, let’s get back to the basics of B2B. Put yourself in prospects and customers shoes. Open your browser and dare to face the white Google search box…
What would your prospect have to do to find your business, product or service? Use one, two, three and even 7 or more words.
Also, note the suggestions that the search engine offers. Although Google takes into consideration your navigation and search habits by using “cookies”, notice the proposed combination of words. It illustrates not only the “popular” choice among similar searches but it also combines long term and short term relevance of phrases, as well as geographical considerations, this according to Google.
The experts
Only once you have gotten quite familiar with your specific situation will it will be appropriate to call on experts having a comprehensive approach to your needs in sales and marketing. in this case, your inbound marketing (inbound).
SEO specialists, blogs or social media cannot meet all your needs. A combination of specialists in the field will provide you with a more durable solution.
Finally, keep in mind that in B2B, we seek quality sales leads, not quantities of sales leads so choose carefully and don’t hesitate call upon B2B marketing specialists.
