knowing your customer and intended TARGET MARKET

  The true value of knowing and understanding your customer base and intended target market audience is one of the most important aspects of your SEO strategy.

Before you can know who your customers are, and who your intended target market audience should be,   you need to do the relevant research and have the company action plan in your arsenal of documents that you will be using as reference points in your target market research.

Knowing the purpose, aims and objectives of the company are very helpful in doing your target market research.  Having access to the product / service or event documentation, that you will be marketing and all related information is also a pre-requisite to any serious topic and key word research.

Access to your company accounting records, showing the contact details and any other information that may be available such as buying patterns, product usage stats,  service complainants and complements as well as any recommendations that may have been sent to the administrative staff  are of extreme helpful nature during the early stages of the SEO process where key words and selected topic structures are selected to be turned into online content for your information consumers (intended target market audience) to consume.

Content that supplies an answer to your interned target market audience as well as your current audience and customer base is highly recommended as potential online content, and this should be a very highly sort after content category. If you do not know your intended target market, how can you satisfy the information  needs of your intended target mark.?

How do you get to know your target audience so that you may use this within your greater marketing vision?

Target market research is a very delicate affair, where great care should be taken to ensure that all false positives are eliminated from your target market makeup.  failure here can be very costly further down the line, when your online content suddenly starts to tank out of the SERP's due to a very poor conversion rates as well as bad  bounce rates The false positives within your target market mix is the biggest cause of this terrible state of affairs that is going to be very costly to repair. 

If you take the time to do your target market research properly,  and document this in a manner that others can easily understand, and also have access to, then things further down the line also become an awful lot easier.  From a #FUFISM based marketing  perspective this documentation of your intended target market is vital, as the post publication stages of your SEO where you concentrate on expanding the influence of you  published content through the #OPSEO (Off Page Search Engine Optimisation) stages of your SEO using the various social media marketing techniques where link building, network building, inbound marketing, SEM (Search Engine Marketing) and so many other techniques are applied, all have the same target market and focus on the same basic keyword set that is used within your #IPSEO (In Page Search Engine Optimisation)

By taking the time to know and understand your intended target market audience, then documenting your findings,  you allow your various online marketing teams to have insights into how they should apply this information.  This will help your copywriters for your  various online platforms to collaborate and share insights as to the methods that they use within their specific platform, and how other copywriters in other platforms may make use of their content to bolster #STFSEOVI (Semantic Trust Factor Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators)

If your copywriters all have access to this customer / target market centric information, as well as the issues around the In Page SCHEMA tricks and other related techniques used to expand the semantic footprint of your original web site or blog content, then these can be used as well in ways that  enhance your semantic footprint and add value to the related SEOVI associated with the IPSEO.


It thus follows that knowing your target market audience and customer base are an essential part of the SEO process that needs to be shared across different marketing platforms, as they all have the same basic issues when it comes to connecting with the end users thinking patterns and related online behavior.

Once your web site content is published the real SEO takes place within the social media, where your social media posts discuss your web site content in ways that entice your intended target market to click through and consume the content within your web site.  Social media marketing thus also forms a large portion of your traffic driving techniques and plays many different roles within your total marketing strategies .

Improving the STFSEOVI or Semantic Trust Factor Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators is not the only function of your social media marketing. Driving traffic to your web site is also part and parcel of your social media marketing aims and objectives.  Link building and network marketing are also part and parcel of the SEO factors included in your social media marketing efforts. There are also a host of other issues that are addressed by your social media marketing such as but not limited to :

inbound marketing
customer contact  and information sharing issues
HR (Human resource) issues
PR (Public relations) issues

*knowing how your intended target market audience perceives these issues, and knowing how to frame these issues in a manner that best suits your intended target market is thus a vital issue that can only be addressed through a clear understanding of who your intended target market audience is, and why this population segment was chosen as your intended target market audience  in the first place*

IT IS THUS IMPORTANT THAT YOU KNOW YOUR CUSTOMERS AND INTENDED TARGET MARKET AUDIENCE VERY WELL.

 Knowing your customers and intended target market audience allows you to target them in an informed and well managed way, that would be impossible other wise.  Knowing your audience allows you to address their pain points and service their information needs  from an informed perspective, so take the time and do the necessary research, and remember to document this research clearly, as many different marketing professional will be relying on this vital information in their planning of content strategies and associated work.

key words versus query: what is the difference?

Key words versus query : what is the difference?

This topic comes up quite a bit within the search industry, and is actually rather irritating in my mind.  The reason,  at least in my minds eye,  is that those who are asking this question have no clue as to the meaning of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and even less understanding of the terms #IPSEO  #OPSEO   (edited and added new term) #OLSEO

First I do believe we need to clarify what exactly is SEO or Search Engine Optimisation, as there are so many different definitions for Search Engine Optimisation, with many being worded specifically so that a certain biased view is highlighted.  this leaves many people confused, as they do not get exposed to other ideas, and are stuck with a biased view of what Search Engine Optimization truly is, and what it can achieve.

From my perspective,  I like to think of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) as all the work done by your entire marketing team, as well as all their partners to ensure that your online work is discovered by your intended target market audience,  when they search online for anything related to your products, services or other  online content.

SEO or search engine optimisation has three separate objectives that need to be achieved to be declared successful, and the last objective has two components.  these objectives are

1) your online content must be indexed by a search engine

2) your online content must appear in the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages)

3) Your selected target market audience must select your result in the SERP (Search Engine Result Page) then follow through by clicking on your desired CTA (Call To  Action) within your online content.

Failure in any one of these three objectives means that your SEO (search Engine Optimisation) has failed.

SEO is divided into  two main parts, the first is #IPSEO or In Page search Engine Optimisation and the second is #OPSEO or Off Page search engine optimisation, which has a NEW subdivision called #OLSEO

IPSEO is the primary part of your SEO strategy, and is dependent on your target market and the associated target market research, along with topic and key word research.  There are also a host of IPSEO issues that are not connected to keywords in any way, which are also of extreme importance.  These are things like the visual appeal, the navigation structure, in page images, in page audio, in page video, content structure, meta tags and HTML mark up as well as  many others.

OPSEO is all the stuff that happens of page and includes things like but not limited to

relationship building
link building
social media marketing

OLSEO is where you do all the off line stuff like

radio marketing
print media marketing   (news papers, flyers and bill boards)
road shows and Public relations issues

These off line media are the spaces  where you psychologically attack your intended target market in subtle ways to get your keywords stuck within their thinking patterns so that they will use these key words when they formulate their online search queries.  You basically plant semantic seeds in this zone, that will be nurtured and fertilized within the online environment to grow from semantic seeds to become search queries.

Key words are those words that your copy writer and associated staff will use during content creation.

Queries are what an end user of a search engine type into the query box when looking for your online content.

It thus follows that you use keywords and selected topics within the make up and design of your online content, and your intended target market constructs queries (hopefully using your selected keywords|) which they then type into the query box when searching online.

If you have done  your OPSEO or Off Page Search Engine Optimisation a properly, then your intended target market audience will use your selected key words when they construct their query.  


This is an awful lot more difficult than I have alluded to here, and the OPSEO work covers many more areas than I discussed here, but each is in place to ensure that your intended Target use your selected key words when searching, and that search engines understand the intent of your online efforts. 

If you have done your #IPSEO or In Page Search Engine Optimisation properly then the search engine will match a search query to your online content  by understanding the intent of both your online content and your intended  target market audience when they are looking for your content.

Key words are used by the design staff during the page creation process, and queries are used by your intended target market audience to surface your online content.

Queries are constructed using what ever words are in your target markets current thought processes, so your OPSEO or Off page Search Engine Optimisation and the related OLSEO or Off Line Search Engine Optimisation, must in some way influence the thinking patterns and thought processes of your intended target market audience to be successful. 

Your IPSEO  must  cater to the search engines algorithms,  and influence the semantic footprint of your online content to reflect the intent of your online content in the most appropriate way to search engines 

Your OPSEO must cater for both search engines and your intended target market. Your OPSEO must influence the thinking patterns of your intended target market to ensure that they will use your key words in search queries.  Your OPSEO must also allow search engines to interpret and act on the intent of your online content as well as the meaning and related semantics of your online content.

Your OLSEO must impact on the thinking processes and thought patterns of your intended target audience and influence this group to use your selected key words as search queries.

What is OPSEO, and why should you care?

OPSEO or Off Page Search Engine Optimisation is the true driver of impressive Search Engine Results Pages more commonly referred to as  SERP's

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is divided into two separate parts, the first is #IPSEO or In Page search Engine Optimisation and the second is  #OPSEO or Off Page Search Engine Optimisation.  

IPSEO is all the coding and HTML work, as well as the related image issues,  copy writing stuff  and other issues that are found directly within the page.

OPSEO is all the other stuff that happens off of the page in question, and included a wide variety of different issues, most of which are not easily interpreted as being directly related to a search engine in any way.

 Off Page Search engine Optimisation is very poorly understood, and when Google introduced the Hummingbird algorithm in August / September 2013 things got even more confusing because they introduced a whole new range of OPSEOVI (Off Page Search Engine Optimization Value Indicators) ,  where the STFOPSEOVI (Semantic Trust Factor Off Page Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators) were totally ignored in the beginning because we as online marketers did not realise the value that Google and other search engines placed on these very sneaky and ultra devious new range of Search Engine Optimization Value Indicators

When Google attempted to force all authors to make use of the *REL = AUTHOR* tag within their online work we as marketing folks did not understand the value that they had attached to this, and many simply ignored this, and quite a large percentage of folks out there were very anti the FORCED MOVE,  and refused to take part in this exercise.  This along with the fact that the G+ or Google Plus Social media network was also not taking off as many folks thought is should,  set the Google authorship program back a lot more than most folks realise.

Google was forced to take other measures to calculate and measure topical author authority, and its connections to the value of specific online content.  These were the early days during which many of the new algorithms defining topical author authority and relevant publisher authority as #OPSEOVI (Off Page Search Engine Optimization Value Indicators)  were developed and tested.  Today Author authority and publisher values are used extensively within many different algorithms that focus on the issues around social media signals and SMSEOVI ( Social Media Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators)

Author value on its own is worth didly squat (NADER ZERO) just as publisher value on its own is worthless    That being said these two values of Author value and publisher value are two of the most importnat issues when dealing with all web pages, blog posts and social media posts within both the IPSEO (In Page Search Engine Optimisation)  and the OPSEO (Off Page Search Engine Optimisation) calculations, that form  the core value indicators for each and every social media search engine optimization value indicator that is algorithmically calculated and later used in other search related algorithms.

One needs to remember that Google currently uses in excess of 250 different variables in their many different algorithms that calculate and then  make use of a vast host of different SEOVI (Search engine Optimisation Value Indicators) to match a search query to a SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

Page rank, site rank and domain rank are three of the most critical SEOVI (Search engine Optimisation Value Indicators) that need to be understood when it comes to author and publisher issues, as these three variables are all different and each has an impact on the other two within their calculations, that are done through feed back loops that run until a stable value for each is established, using extreme mathematics that use calculus and derivative limits, where author values and publisher values are also part of the equations.

Domain rank is for the whole domain.  Site rank is for the actual site, which may be  a sub web, a sub domain or the actual domain itself, depending on how your web master has set things up. Page rank is the ranking value for the specific page in question.  Here one needs to remeber that every blog post is deemed to be a stand alone web page,  and every social media post is also deemed to be a stand alone web page with its own URL (Uniform Resource locator or web page name)

This applies to all social media posts including Facebook posts, twitter posts, Google plus posts, Pinterest pins, Instagram posts, linked in posts and any other social media platform that you can think of..  The page rank, . site rank and domain rank all have a big influence on your other Search Engine Optimisation variables, where once again the mathematics involves a means to calculate limits through integrated and derivative methods within the calculus world.

Every single OPSEOVI (Off Page Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicator) is generated by an author,  or a publisher, and as such carries the semantic relevance attached to that specific author or publisher or both, as determined by the search engine during the information evaluation stages, where the online information is evaluated and worked on to set up the preliminary stages of setting values for secondary  SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators) which will be used by the next stage search algorithms, to calculate and store a new set of SEOVI that will be used to match a search query to a set of results in the form of a SERP (Search Engine results Page) in subsequent algorithm activities.

How you as an author use the social media, other web sites or blogs to link to the information that you want found within the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) is carefully evaluated and studied by the search engines, where a host of different things are evaluated during the OPSEO process and include but are not limited to questions like:

who you are
what do you normaly write about within the social media (all platforms)
is your social media post, blog post or other web page on topic when compared to
     the information that you are linking to
     the in image meta data of any images within your online content
    other related posts that you have made linking to the same domain, the same site or the same page
how often do you post within this specific social media platform.
how often do you post on other social media platforms
Do you comment on posts in this social media platform, and if so how often
do you comment on posts in other social media platforms, and if so how often
do you post to any blogs
    are these blogs related to each other semantically
   are these blogs related to your post in any way at all
   does this specific post contain relevant semantically linked content

There are so many more questions that are addressed and answered,  then these answers are used in  extreme mathematical equations to determine the relevant SEOVI  for this stage, and the values that will be pushed through to other algorithms that will check and compare these results for quality and correctness before storing the values for future use in the next stages of the search process.

It thus follows that ones author value along with the associated semantic trust factors that are connected to you as an individual in the form of your SEMANTIC FOOTPRINT are important issues that need to be well manged and properly understood.  Failure to interpret these issues properly and address issues that have a negative impact on your author and publisher values thus have a negative impact on your OPSEO (Off Page Search Engine Optimisation) efforts, which will cause all your other online work to feature less prominently within any SERP (Search Engine Results Page)

Now the trick here is to understand the values associated with public and private shares within the social media and how these impact on your OPSEO (Off Page Search Engine Optimisation)   Private shares are blocked from being included in the search indexing process, and so have a ZERO value to your OPSEO (Off Page Search Engine Optimisation).  The only place that private shares have any value within Google Plus (G+) is when you are logged in to Google, then your private shares and all your public shares as well as a host of other stuff such as your other Google activities including Gmail,  your Google calendaar, your Google docs and so many other Google related issues are considered.  This includes the issues of all those within your contact lists, your G+ Circles and where you have commented on any private posts as well.

You do need to understand the very big difference between a search in Google while you are logged in and a search in Google when you are logged out.   Many do not know that there is a vast difference, as they are nearly always logged into Google through Gmail, Google Docs or some other Google service..

Now getting back to Off Page Search Engine optimisation......  OPSEO is all the work that your entire marketing team, and their many partners  do, which is both off line and online to promote your online work within the search space.  Many marketers forget that the print media, the radio, television and any other media forms part of their SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) tactics.

  I here you asking what does radio have to do with SEO.... 


Well to answer where RADIO advertising /marketing and the print media  as well as other off line marketing tactics fit  into the SEO world we need to understand WHAT IS SEO.

SEO or Search engine Optimisation is all the work done by your entire amrketing team, along with all thier partners to ensure that
1) your online work is indexed by a search engine
2) the search engine lists your online content in their SERP's (Search Engine results pages)
3) your selected target market discovers your online content when searching online
4) your desired target market audience actually clicks on the your link in the SEREP's (Search Engine results Pages)
5) your target market selects and acts on a CTA (Call To Action) within the page he / she selected from the SERP (Search Engine Results Page)

So the question arises how do you influence your intended target market audience to type those specific keywords chosen during your target market research and related semantic information into a search box ?

This is done by sneakily using the Television, radio, print media and other offline marketing platforms to use psychological tactics and put these specified key words into your interned target markets thinking patterns,  and talking styles,  to ensure the use of these words and the language that they use in general conversation,  with their family, friends or work colleges within their search query.   This step is the most vital part of any good SEO campaign especially if you are using #HASHTAGMARKETING in any way.

Many online marketers do not use this step, and have very little or in most cases ZERO input into any off line marketing campaign.  This is a very big error, which can be eliminated through the use of a #FUFISM based marketing management style.

So in conclusion #OPSEO or Off Page Search Engine Optimsation is all the off  Page work done by your entire marketing team to ensure that your intended target market uses the correct terminology and semantic terminology when using a search engine to surface your online content within the SERP's, and then select your online content as a result of the relevant search snippet showing within the SERP (Search Engine result Page)

You need to care about your OPSEO or Off Page Search Engine Optimisation, as this is the most appropriate  way that you can influence a search engine to take your online content seriously, and influence a search engine to apply the best snippet that matches a search query, to entice your intended target market to select your online content from the results displayed in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page)

Below is a list of pages discussing related issues including semantic search.  each of these posts will add some value to your understanding of the issues around OPSEO and what you can do to get better at doing Off Page Search Engine Optimisation.

READ THE COMMENTS IN THESE POSTS

http://www.convinceandconvert.com/digital-marketing/do-social-signals-drive-seo/
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+JasonDarrell/posts/PrNxt4xeFn4
https://plus.google.com/+SergioRedondo/posts/56nQK53kTTS
http://www.kayakonlinemarketing.com/blog/does-social-engagement-affect-search-results
https://plus.google.com/+RandyMilanovic/posts/gMH9yFqia4d
https://plus.google.com/+FrankGainsford/posts/VWoJQWPRFEr
https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/103079475562443214899
https://plus.google.com/+FrankGainsford/posts/AEe4ePWRziy