As a marketer, you must find ways and methods to reach your audience. Marketers have many marketing channels available to convey their messages to their audience. However, to get the best ROI, you must select the right marketing channels. And one channel that marketers cannot ignore is email marketing. Email marketing, without a doubt, is one of the most effective marketing channels because it delivers a high return on investments.

If you thought email marketing was down and dusted, you are wrong. It is a channel that has yielded great results in the past, and it continues to do so even today. It is unwise to ignore email marketing.

But if you are not getting the desired results from your email marketing campaigns, then you might just have to tweak your strategy. That is exactly what we plan to address in this article – email marketing mistakes you need to avoid to make your campaigns more successful.

Apart from segmenting your customers, focusing on mobile users, adding a call to action, being professional in your messages, you also need to focus on these three things – let your recipients contact you, avoid spamming at all costs, and follow the rules when sending emails.

Let us take them up one by one.

Let your recipients contact you

If your prospects and customers don’t know from whom they are receiving the email, then it is difficult for your email marketing campaign to be successful.
Hence, if you are using email addresses like no-reply@ or DoNotReply@, you should stop doing it because your customers don’t appreciate it. It is crucial to understand that if your open rates are low and you are using these email addresses, then this could be one of the reasons why you are not getting the desired results.
It is the sender’s name that prompts people to open the email.
Make sure you send emails from an address that allows your recipients to contact you. Don’t send emails from addresses like no-reply@ or DoNotReply@. You should always let your recipients contact you.
You not only need to send emails from an address that your customers can respond to, but you should also ensure that your email displays your phone numbers and your social media profile links so that your customers can contact you as and when the need arises.
For example, in case you are the CEO of a large business house, then you are surely not the one who sends out emails to clients. But as the CEO of the company, people do recognise your name. Regardless of who sends out the mail in your company, it is crucial to understand that the email should have a recognisable name.
It is important, therefore, to understand that whenever you send out an email, it should be from a person within your company. Doing this can give you an edge over others.

Avoid spamming at all costs

Email marketing can give you great results, but you should never overdo it. Overdoing here means sending too many emails to your customers. When people subscribe to your emails, they expect you to be responsible. Sending them emails one after the other does not augur well for your email marketing campaign.
As it is, an office going person receives too many emails every day. People unsubscribe from email lists mainly because they start getting too many messages.
Always think from your customer’s perspective. If you get annoyed when you receive junk emails, it can also frustrate your customers.
You would certainly not want to annoy your customers. That is why you should avoid spamming at all costs.
Your newsletters should add value to your customers. People should look forward to receiving your emails. However, if you start sending them too many irrelevant messages, your messages lose relevance. You need to understand that when people sign up to receive your emails, it means they have some amount of interest in your content. Give them a breather and don’t annoy them.
You also need to be realistic. It is important to understand that people don’t shop all the time, and they can also not visit your website twice a day.
When it comes to email promotions, you should limit it to one per week.
It is a good idea to ask your customers about the communication frequency and the type of messages they want to receive upfront at the time of the sign up. You can segment them accordingly to cater to their needs.

You also need inventory management software

Inventory management is a crucial aspect of the e-commerce business. You need to know when you run out of stock so that your customers have a smooth experience on your site. Inventory management software helps you track your inventory across your store and website.

There are a few features that you need to consider when selecting inventory management software. Find out if there is any limit on the number of products you can manage with the software. You also need to check how well it syncs with your website and your storefront. After all, it is difficult to manage two programs. Also, check out the reporting features it offers. Find out if you will get information in advance about your inventory.

Also, you need customer relationship management software

Managing customers is extremely crucial in the e-commerce business. With customer relationship management software, you can store all the information about your customers like their name, address, phone number, email IDs, and purchase history in one place. These are crucial and invaluable information that can facilitate new sales. A CRM system helps you to know what your customers want and when they need it. When you know your customers well, it helps you to fine-tune your marketing efforts. And, a CRM system helps you on that front.

Follow the rules when sending emails

It is also vital to know that you need to follow the rules when sending out emails. It is legally binding on businesses to take prior permission of the subscribers before sending out email messages to them. Sending unsolicited emails is morally and ethically wrong.
Creating, designing, and running a successful email marketing campaign is not as easy as you may think. You need professionals to get the best results. If you are looking for a reliable and professional email marketing company, you can contact vStacks Software Solutions.

A lot has changed in the last few decades – from the way we communicate and interact to how we shop – things are not the same as they used to be. Digitisation has changed most of how we live our lives these days. It is not necessary to physically go out to the market to shop for stuff you need in your day-to-day lives. We can sit at home and order pretty much anything from the cool confines of our homes.

Thanks to the e-commerce platforms, you can now shop from wherever you want and buy what you desire.

E-commerce has been a growing vertical for quite some time now. Many brands, big and small, have added digital platforms to serve their online customers. This has made e-commerce an extremely competitive vertical.

That is why if you are thinking of taking your business online, you are in the right place. Let us, therefore, take you through why your business needs an online platform, how to transition to your e-commerce solution, and why an e-commerce solution needs to be secure.

Digital buying is on the rise

Digital buying is on the rise for quite some time now. However, the coronavirus pandemic has necessitated many consumers to switch to digital modes of buying to keep themselves safe. The lockdown in many countries forced the consumers to form new habits, and the pattern is likely to continue even after the pandemic subsides.

With the brick-and-mortar shops closed for business, sales took a severe beating during the pandemic. Though the restrictions have eased, digital habits will have a long-lasting impact on physical retail sales, which is unlikely to return to pre-pandemic levels any time soon.

The device that will benefit the most from the growth in e-commerce sales is mobile. By 2024, m-commerce will account for one-fifth of total retail sales.

How to transition to your e-commerce solution?

The number of digital buyers is increasing at a rapid pace.

In today’s times, if you don’t have an online presence, you are missing big time on opportunities. Hence, if you want to sell online, it is crucial to know how to move in the right direction.

Here is what you will need to transition your business online:

You should have a decent website

Without a doubt, you need a decent website to start your online journey. Though you can sell your products on Amazon and Facebook, it is always a good idea to have a website of your own if you are planning to make inroads in the online arena. Your website will be the face of your organisation; hence, it is crucial to have a great site.

Your website has to do a lot of hard work – it needs to display the products, tempt potential customers to browse your site, and provide all the relevant information your customers might need to buy the product; hence, you need to focus more on your website.

You also need a reliable hosting provider. When selecting a hosting provider, make sure the vendor you opt for can handle a large amount of traffic. You cannot afford to lose your customers because of hosting issues.

While you are on your website, make sure you focus a bit on its design. You need to ensure that your website is easy to use and reflects your brand’s image. It is also crucial to make your website mobile-friendly as many people these days use their mobiles to shop.

You need shopping cart software

To make sure that your customers complete their purchases, you must have shopping cart software. With shopping cart software in place, your customers can add items to their cart. Once your customers add items to their cart, they can process their transactions.

You have a lot many options to choose from for your shopping cart software. But make sure the one you choose is easy to install on your website. It is also crucial to select one that your customers can use easily. The software should also accept multiple payment types.

Select the shopping cart software very carefully. It is an important decision to make because it plays a crucial role in your online journey.

You also need inventory management software

Inventory management is a crucial aspect of the e-commerce business. You need to know when you run out of stock so that your customers have a smooth experience on your site. Inventory management software helps you track your inventory across your store and website.

There are a few features that you need to consider when selecting inventory management software. Find out if there is any limit on the number of products you can manage with the software. You also need to check how well it syncs with your website and your storefront. After all, it is difficult to manage two programs. Also, check out the reporting features it offers. Find out if you will get information in advance about your inventory.

Also, you need customer relationship management software

Managing customers is extremely crucial in the e-commerce business. With customer relationship management software, you can store all the information about your customers like their name, address, phone number, email IDs, and purchase history in one place. These are crucial and invaluable information that can facilitate new sales. A CRM system helps you to know what your customers want and when they need it. When you know your customers well, it helps you to fine-tune your marketing efforts. And, a CRM system helps you on that front.

Don’t forget social media

Irrespective of how great your website looks; you need to spread the word around so that people start coming to your website. That is where you need to tap social media correctly. Make sure you have an account on all the major social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. You can leverage these platforms to promote your online store so that people start coming to your site. But it is difficult to manage social media accounts single-handedly. You can use social media management tools that allow you to schedule your posts in advance, manage multiple accounts from one place, and track all your customer’s interactions.

Do opt for split testing

When you opt for split testing, you know what will work for you and things that won’t have a great impact on your business. In split testing, you create two almost similar versions of your website and display one of them to each visitor randomly. You can find out which page is performing better. Split testing helps you to make the right decisions.

An e-commerce solution needs to be secure

Security is an important aspect of the e-commerce business. When someone comes to shop on your e-commerce platform, they put in a lot of personal details on the site. And, unless you offer foolproof security, your customer’s data is at risk. With data theft on the rise, it is crucial to keep your customer’s data safe from the prying eyes.

Besides financial implications, a data breach can harm your reputation in a big way. Your loyal customers will stop buying from your site if they have had a bad experience in the past. Hence, if you are thinking of taking your business online, you need to put in place all the security measures that help keep your customer’s data safe and secure from the prying eyes,

That is why an e-commerce solution needs to be secure.

Digitisation has a big role to play in an economy these days. E-commerce and other facets of the digital economy have two main factors, namely digital data and digital platforms. Digital data is a new economic resource to create value. That is why it is crucial to control data strategically because it helps transform them into digital intelligence.

E-commerce businesses can also benefit a lot from data. E-commerce businesses can offer better services to their customers if they properly use the data they collect from them.

In developed countries, the majority of the population now shops online. However, that is not the case in developing countries. With limited digital preparedness, many developing countries lag in online commerce.

To boost trust among online consumers, it is crucial to strengthen the protection of users. It is also important to strengthen cybersecurity infrastructure. On the supply end, the problems that are creating bottlenecks include SMEs’ lack of familiarity with e-commerce and the constant transport and logistics challenges. If you don’t take the necessary precautions to protect the users, the e-commerce business can suffer a lot.

The loopholes in the local ecosystem and low technological capability make it difficult for digital platforms to do well in developing countries. That is why they have to adopt a slew of business-model innovations to meet their bottom line.

Digital platforms might need someone who can act as an intermediary to facilitate data entry, collect cash payments on delivery, run a call centre to meet the calling needs, etc.

Many a time, digital platforms need to create physical supply-chain and logistics services like distribution channels, warehouses, payment points, delivery vehicles, and drivers. Often, they also have to invest in IT infrastructure, management, and business skills.

If you do the e-commerce business the right way, you can grow exponentially as an organisation. But to do the business properly, you need the right platform. Unless you get the right e-commerce platform, it is tough to make a mark in the online arena.

If you plan to start your e-commerce store, you should contact vStacks Software Solutions, Dubai. We are a software development organisation, and we know what it takes to develop an e-commerce platform. We can not only build the platform for your online business, but we can host it and give it the right thrust it needs to reach your target audience as we also specialise in digital marketing.

Most businesses today have a website. But a website alone cannot do you any good. To reap the full benefits of the online revolution, you need to make sure that your website ranks well on search engines like Google. However, with competition on the internet growing fast, your website needs a smart SEO strategy to rank well on search engines. But it is crucial to understand that your SEO strategy cannot become smart unless you do proper keyword research. You cannot rank well on search engines if you don’t know what keywords are crucial to your business.

So, what is keyword research?

The process of finding the search words or phrases that people enter on search engines is called keyword research. When you know what search terms people use to get to where they want to go, it helps you to come up with a relevant content strategy, which, in turn, helps you achieve your overall online marketing goals.

Whether you do your SEO on your own or hire an SEO services company, it is vital to know your SEO keywords to rank well on search engines.

So, what should you do to get found with SEO keywords?

To make things clear, let us take you through how to get started with keyword research, discovering new keywords, and picking the best keywords for your brand.

Getting started with keyword research

Things in the online world change thick and fast like your SEO strategy due to changing Google Algorithm. But one thing that has more or less remained consistent over the years is keyword research. However, the way of doing keyword research has certainly changed over time.

Keyword research is important because it lets you know the topics people are looking for on the internet. And, when you do it correctly, you get to know the popular topics among your audience. Proper keyword research allows you to know the terms or keywords that are getting high volumes of searches every month. When you know the high-volume keywords, you can design your content accordingly, and then you can use that content to target those keywords.

When it comes to keyword research, knowing the user intent behind the keyword is extremely important because it is the intent that helps you rank well on search engines like Google. You also need to keep in mind that carrying only the keyword on your webpage is not sufficient – your content needs to address the search intent of the user. Since the intent is extremely important for your ranking, you need to make sure that you interpret the targeted keywords correctly.

If you want to crosscheck the user’s intent in a keyword, you should key it in a search engine and check the results it throws up.

So, how should you go about doing keyword research? Here is how to get started with keyword research:

Start by listing down important and relevant topics keeping in mind the things you know about your business. Create a list of topics for which you want to rank. List down 5 – 10 topics that you think are relevant for your business. Based on these topics, you can zero-in on the relevant keywords for your business. While selecting the topics, think from your audience’s perspective. Think of what your audience would be looking for the most and select topics on those lines. For example, if you are a blogger, some of the topics that you might want to pick up are:

Blogging

SEO

Email marketing

Marketing analytics

Email marketing

Lead generation

You can find out the search volume for each topic, which will help you to streamline your content strategy. Depending on the relevance of each topic, you can create sub-topics and start generating the relevant content.

Next, pick up relevant keywords for each topic. While selecting keywords, think from the perspective of your audience – what they would be searching for and what they want. You should select keywords or phrases for which you want to rank for in the SERPs. For example, if you are an ERP software development company, then some of the keywords that you can think of are:

How to use ERP software?

What is ERP software?

How to find the best ERP software?

How to find out if you need ERP software?

These are some of the phrases that your audience might look for when looking for an ERP solution. You can take the help of tools to find out which keywords would help you rank well.

Don’t forget to take into account the keywords that are already driving traffic to your website. Take the help of Google Analytics to find out your going keywords. Repeat this exercise for all your topics so that you come with a final list of keywords that would help you rank well.

As a marketer, your primary job is to reach out to your customers and prospects effectively. Whether you use traditional marketing methods or Internet marketing methods, the goal is to reach, attract and convert as many potential customers as possible. There are many ways to reach out to your customers effectively when we talk of internet marketing. And social media is by far one of the most effective ways to reach your audience.

You can miss out on opportunities if you don’t use social media to your advantage.

Yes, social media marketing or SMM is extremely crucial these days to promote your brand, engage with your existing customers, and attract potential clients. If you follow the right steps, SMM can give you great results. It can surely increase the visibility of your company and help you get noticed.

You can do SMM yourself or hire a social media marketing services company to do the needful for your brand and company. Regardless of the route you take, it is vital to understand a few things about social media marketing so that you can use it properly to propel your brand.

Let us, therefore, find out what is social media marketing, how it can help your business, and how to choose the best SMM platforms for marketing.

An overview of social media marketing

Social media marketing is by far the most effective way to reach your customers and prospects for businesses, both big and small. When you use social media platforms in the right manner, it can help you connect with your audience, enhance brand awareness, increase your sales, and bring more traffic to your website. What you need to do is publish high-quality content on your social media profiles, connect and engage with your followers, run social media ads, and finally analyse your results.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Snapchat are some of the major social media platforms that businesses need to factor in to promote their company.

Here is an overview of the social media marketing that will help you understand why you need it:

Earlier SMM was all about publishing content. Businesses use to share their content to increase traffic coming to their website and improve sales. But social media marketing has evolved over the years.

These days social media is used for various other reasons as well. Businesses use social media for social listening and engagement, where companies monitor social media to know what people are saying about their brand. Businesses also use social media to analyse their performance on social media in terms of reach, engagement, and sales, which is known as social media analytics. Also, businesses use social media to reach their specific target audience, which is known as social media advertising. And, when you work on all these aspects, it is referred to as social media management.

But to get the best result from your social media activities, you need to ensure that you do it in a structured way.

To start with, you need to have a social media strategy in place. Without a robust social media strategy, it is highly unlikely that you will get the desired results. And, a good social media strategy starts with understanding and setting your goals and objectives. Then, you need to pick up the social media platforms that you think you need for your business. Finally, decide on the type of content you need to attract your audience – do you need to put out educational or entertainment content, will it be in the form of a link, image, or video, and how often do you need to fine-tune your content strategy.

To get good results, you need to make sure that your presence on social media is consistent. You need to publish your content, be it a blog post, social media post/s, image, or video, regularly and consistently on the social media platforms you use. Hence, if you want to reach out to your audience regularly, you need to plan well in advance what you would publish on these platforms. Timing and frequency are also important if you want to get good results from your social media activities. You need to post at the right time and be consistent with your efforts. There are social media scheduling tools that can help you post your content without any delay.

Listening and engagement are also extremely important social media aspects that you should never ignore. Social media is an interactive medium. It is crucial to listen to what people are saying about your brand and engage with them so that you send out a message that you are receptive to the needs of your customers and prospects. That is why it is vital to monitor social media conversations that are happening about your brand. If you don’t engage with your customers and prospects, it will not go down well with them.

It is vital to assess your social media marketing performance periodically so that you can fine-tune your strategy as and when required. That is why social media analytics is extremely crucial to the success of your strategy. Most social media platforms provide this information. But you can also take the help of other social media analytics tools to get a more in-depth analysis.

If you have the resources and want to take your SMM to the next level, then you need to consider social media advertising. Advertising on social media allows you to reach a wider audience. You can create groups and target your audience based on their interests, demographics, buying patterns, and behaviours.

What can social media marketing do for your business?

It is important to understand what can social media marketing do for your business. If you are a search marketer, you might think of how social media would help your cause. But as a search marketer, it is important to know that there is a close relationship between SMM and search. Social media and search have a close relationship because social media keeps discovering new content and discovery is at the heart of search activity. Also, social media can help you get links, which can support your SEO efforts. It means social media marketing can have a positive effect on your website ranking on search engines like Google. Further, people these days also search social media sites to find social media content. Moreover, social connections can make some search results more relevant, which could either be within a social media network or at the level of a search engine.

Social media marketing can do a lot more for your business, and some of them are:

SMM can boost your website traffic.

Social media marketing can improve your conversions.

SMM can enhance your brand awareness.

Social media marketing can create an identity for your brand and improve the brand association.

SMM can improve your interaction and engagement with your audience.

How to choose the best social media platforms for marketing?

If you want to get good results for your SMM activities, you need to select social media platforms carefully. You should select platforms that complement your business. It is important to understand that each platform has a unique user base and environment. Hence, you should devise different strategies for different social media platforms.

Here is an overview that can help you to choose the best social media platforms for marketing:

Facebook

Since Facebook has a casual and friendly environment, you need an active SMM strategy to do well on this platform. To start with Facebook, you can create a Facebook Business Fan Page. Also, since the visual part plays the main role on Facebook, you need to pay a lot of attention to the layout.

Also, since Facebook is a casual and friendly platform, you should ensure that your content is light and friendly. But you need to understand that organic reach on Facebook is not all that great; hence you should consider Facebook advertising. Facebook advertising can impact your organic Facebook presence positively.

Pinterest

Most website owners are now familiar with the term SEO. Search engine optimization or SEO is the method we use to get traffic from organic search results or search engines. SEO is a broad term that has several aspects attached to it. And one of them is local SEO.

As a business, it is crucial to understand why local SEO is so important.

Local SEO or local search engine optimisation promotes and optimizes a website to get favourable results in the local search results. And that is what matters to most businesses.

Local search includes all those search terms that are intrinsically local and caters to the local audiences like restaurants near me, doctors near me, restaurants in my city, or doctors in my city.

If you have a brick-and-mortar business, and you want to cater to a local audience, then you need to work on local SEO. It can help your website to rank well on local search results when people search for businesses in your niche.

Working on local SEO means, all your efforts, namely content, on-page optimisation, and link building should have localised intent. But when it comes to localised link acquisition, you need to ensure that all potential link signals are consistent and correct across Google’s local search spectrum. If the information is not correct and consistent, then there is a chance that your local results throw up something different than what you wanted the result to display.

It is vital to understand the local SEO issue in the right perspective.

Let us, therefore, try to understand why local SEO is important, what are some local SEO services, and how do local SEO and organic SEO work together.

Why is local SEO important?

So, why is local SEO important?

If you serve primarily to a local audience, it is important to work on local SEO so that you get the desired traffic.

To explain the importance of local SEO, let us take you through some of the vital Statistics:

According to a study conducted by Google in association with Ipsos MediaCT and Purchased, half of those who conducted a local search on their smartphone visited a physical store within 24 hours, and 34% of those who conducted their search on computer/ tablet also visited a store within 24 hours.

18% of local mobile searches convert to a sale within one day.

50% of mobile phone searchers who conduct local searches are interested in things such as a local business address.

One in three searches on a smartphone was conducted just before reaching a store.

What are some local SEO services?

Local SEO is dynamic – it keeps changing thick and fast. That is why you need a lot of time and effort to get it right. To get local SEO right, you need to have an in-depth knowledge of local SEO. That is why, as a business owner, it is important to know some of the local SEO services so that you know what it takes to do well in local search results.

Here are some local SEO services that you need to know about:

Localising your website

Website localisation means that your website should have the name of your city, country, or region all over your site. If you operate from several places, then you need to create separate pages or content hubs for each place. Another way of website localisation is to involve your business in local community events and carry articles and news about them on your website.

Focus on citation building

Make sure your site is added to citation sites and online business directories. Adding your business on citation sites and online business directories improve your website visibility and help your potential customers to find you easily. Moreover, when you feature on citation sites with all your contact information like name, address, phone number, and website URL (NAPW) and add other information to business directories, it improves your search engine rankings.

Adding your business to Google My Business listing

You need to add your business to Google My Business listing so that it prominently features on Google services like local search results and Google Maps. If you want to do well on local SEO, the first thing you need to do is add your business to Google My Business listing. You should also add your business to Bing Places for Business

Focus on managing reviews and ratings

Reviews are important not just for showcasing the quality of your product or service, but it is also critical for sending the right signals to search engines. That is why it is vital to concentrate on genuine and honest reviews. Positive reviews boost trust and usefulness of your site and product/ service in the eyes of search engines. The number of reviews you receive, their quality, and the authority from where they are coming are some of the factors that can make a difference to your local search rankings.

Focus on getting high-quality and relevant backlinks

If you can get high-quality and relevant backlinks naturally from trusted and authoritative websites, it can improve your local search engine rankings. Getting backlinks from trusted sites sends a positive signal to search engines that your website is a trusted source of information, which helps you scale the local search algorithm. To improve your search visibility, ensure that you get links from local newspapers, business associations, bloggers, and citations.

How do local SEO and organic SEO work together?

Local SEO and organic SEO work in tandem. If you follow SEO best practices, it can help both your local search rankings as well as organic search rankings.

So, how do Local SEO and organic SEO work together?

When you add your business page on local listing directories like Google, Yelp, Bing, and TripAdvisor, it means you are also creating a link back to your website. When you add your phone number, address, and name of your business to local listing sites, it helps local SEO by informing search engines about your location. In doing so, you also create a link back to your website, which helps your organic SEO efforts because it is a link building strategy that can propel your ranking on search engines.

Your on-site local SEO activities like writing a blog post that talks of local issues or updating a page (adding your business address) not just helps your local SEO efforts, but it can also help your organic SEO. You need fresh content to keep search engines in good humour. And, when you write local posts or update your page, it not only helps your local SEO efforts, but it can also enhance your organic SEO efforts.

Both local and organic SEO can help improve your rankings if you do these activities in the right manner. But if you don’t follow best practices (or do it the wrong way) for local and organic SEO, it can have a damaging effect on your website rankings.

While you should do everything to please search engines, you need to understand that your potential customers should not have any problem in finding your business. After all, it all boils down to improving customer experience. And, that is exactly what Google emphasises on from the start. You need to make sure that your visitors don’t have any problems locating your business. The information they are looking for about your business, which includes the correct address, your working hours, the products and services you offer, etc. should readily be available to your visitors.

If you have any problem in managing your local SEO activities, you can get in touch with vStacks Software Solutionsnow. We are a full-service digital marketing company, and we have adequate experience and exposure in the SEO industry to propel your local SEO rankings in the right direction. You can also contact us for all your social media marketing needs.

Every website owner wants people to frequent their website. But not all of them succeed in attracting visitors in hordes.

Why?’

The reasons could be many. But one of the prominent reasons why people fail to visit your website is irrelevant or out-of-context keywords. If you want people to visit your website, you need to know what they search – the keywords or words they use and the content that best matches their intent.

Hence, if you want to get on top of the Google game, you need to do two things right – keyword research and understanding user intent.

Changes in the digital world happen thick and fast. For example, Google keeps updating its algorithms frequently, but one thing that has remained more or less consistent over the years is keyword research.

However, though the keyword research hasn’t changed much, the way it is done has seen quite a twist and turns.

Let us, therefore, take you through what is keyword research, how to develop your keyword strategy, and creating content with the user in mind so that you can optimise your online presence.

What is keyword research?

If you want to do well on search engines like Google, you need to know what search queries are used the most by your audience. It is in this context that keyword research assumes so much significance.

So, what is keyword research?

It is a process that helps you to know and understand the actual search terms people use to find what they are looking for on search engines. When you get a clear understanding of the actual search terms, the insight helps you to create a robust content strategy and a smart digital marketing strategy.

As a business owner who has an online presence, you must be aware of the importance of SEO. But that doesn’t mean that keywords or keyword research have lost their relevance.

When you do keyword research properly, you get to know what topics your audience is looking for, what do they like to read about, and the most popular topics among your audience. With proper keyword research, you also get to know your SEO keywords. SEO keywords are the terms/ phrases and keywords in your web content that allow visitors to find your site via search engines. When you optimise your site for search engines and speak the same language as that of your potential visitor, your chances of connecting to your target audiences increases substantially. And, that is what keyword research helps you do with ease.

Hence, with proper keyword research, you can get to know the keywords that are generating high volumes of searches every month and create a robust content strategy to target tour audiences.

How to develop your keyword strategy?

But if you want to do your keyword research properly, it is extremely important that you first have a keyword strategy in place. Doing keyword research is vital, but how you take your journey forward from there is equally important, and this is what makes your keyword strategy.

Based on your keyword research findings, a keyword research strategy is what guides you to make informed decisions about the content you need to create and how you need to monitor and track the results in analytics. A keyword strategy tells you how you need to target your keywords.

So, how should you develop your keyword strategy?

If you want to develop a robust keyword strategy, you need to focus on all the insights. A smart keyword strategy starts with self-assessment. Learn everything that you can about your product/ service and your competitors.

Understand your business

As mentioned earlier, you should first start to assess yourself, your business, your objectives, and your goals. Find out your USPs. Ask yourself, why would people want to visit my site? What is it that you want to convey to your audience? To learn all of this, you need to get hold of all the insights that you can so that you can utilise your resources properly.

Understand search intent

Search intent is an extremely important aspect if you want to do well in the digital world. If you want to know about the intent, it is important to know your audience first. You need to understand what people want, what they are looking for, and where they want to proceed. Try and learn whether your audience is only looking for information, or are they interested in buying things from you. When you know about the intent, you can create content to target the specific intent of your visitors.

Understand words

Words are the be-all and end-all of search. When you do keyword research, you come to know of the words people use to find what they are looking for on search engines. It helps you create user-oriented content that matches their intent to meet their requirements.

Understand your competition

When we talk of keyword strategy, competition forms an integral part of it. You need to have complete knowledge of what your competitors are doing. You need to know where your competitors are ranking for the search terms you are planning to target. When you study your competitors carefully, you can find out ways to outmanoeuvre them. You will get to know the keywords that will work for you – long tail or short keywords.

Understanding search engines

You will, of course, do all your competitor analysis on search engines. When you analyse your competitors, you don’t just get great insights into your competitor’s strategy, but you also get a fair bit of idea of what will happen when you type your main keywords or phrase. When you work so much on search engines, you get to know more about them, how they work, and how search engines give answers that result in no-click searches. Working on search engines over time can help you get a sense of a lot of things like featured snippets, local packs, and rich results.

Understanding data

If you want to make your keyword strategy successful, you need to analyse data. The more you analyse data, the better will be your keyword strategy. To analyse data, both before and after keyword research, you can take the help of Google Analytics. Google Analytics gives you great insights that can help you formulate a successful keyword strategy. Also, you can take the help of Google Search Console to get meaningful insights and pursue opportunities.

Creating content with the user in mind

People search the web with a clear intent in mind – most want answers to their problems, are looking for information about the products and services they want, or things they plan to buy. If you want web users to discover you, you need to optimise your content to match the user intent of your visitors.

Since Google takes pride in displaying the most relevant information to its users, you have to optimise your content for user intent so that it has a better chance of ranking well on the SERP. If you create content keeping user intent in mind, it helps your overall SEO efforts.

That is why it is essential to create content with the user in mind.

So, how do you create a user-intent SEO strategy for the content you produce?

The first thing you need to do is understand the different types of user intent. There are three stages of user intent. Turn to Google for help, and enter the search terms you think your audience will look for the most. The result you get will help you identify the type of content you need to create to tackle your audiences at different stages of user intent.

Informational search queries – The user in such search queries are just looking for more information about the product, topic, or service, and they are not ready to buy the stuff. For example, the query “how can a CRM help my business” is an informational search query. The result Google throws up for such queries are informational like how-to results (blogs and tutorials) with no ads on the result page.

Navigational search queries – The user in such queriesare looking for a specific type of content to firm up his or her option, but they are still some distance away from buying the product or service. For example, the query “what is the best way to choose a CRM” is a navigational search query. The result Google throws up for such queries will have blog posts with a comparative analysis that helps the user firm up his or her decision to buy. The result might give you a hint on how to buy the best CRM for your business, but no one is going all out to sell their product.

Transactional search queries – The user in such queries areall set to buy the product or service. For example, the query “where can I get good CRM for my business” is a transactional search query. Most of the results that Google throws up will be product pages from where you can buy a CRM.

Once you are aware of the different stages of user intent, it should become easy for you to create appropriate content with specific key phrases to target your audiences in each stage.

Next, make sure your existing content centres around user intent. You can do this by going to Google Analytics and checking your top-performing keywords. In case your top-performing keywords/ phrases are not matching the user intent, then you need to revisit your content strategy. What you need to do is create content for each different stage of user intent so that you can target your audience properly. You need to understand that when people are in the informational stage, they don’t plan to buy; hence you need to target them with informational content. But if your user is ready to buy, and your content is only informational, then you are missing out on opportunities. What you need is transactional content at this stage. Hence, it is important to produce content that caters to the user intent of your audiences in each stage.

That is why it is important to create content for user intent. Don’t just concentrate on keywords when you formulate a user-intent SEO strategy. What you need to do is create your content with user intent.  And, because Google understands intent well, it will become difficult for you to rank for content that does not match your keyword.

For instance, if you are targeting for a long-tail keyword like “how to make chicken curry”, but in your blog post, you write more about how to rear a chicken, then you will not rank for search results related to chicken curry; instead, your post will show up in chicken rearing. What this means is you need to create content with user intent in mind. If you don’t keep user intent in mind, you will not get the relevant traffic.

Also, if you want to target your audience through each stage of their journey, then you must create content that caters to each type of user intent. The best way is to guide your audience through each stage and take them to the buying stage finally so that you don’t lose on opportunities.

If you keep user intent in mind while creating content for your website, your SEO strategy is sure to take you places.

If you have any difficulty in keyword research or formulating an effective keyword strategy, you can get in touch with vStacks Software Solutionsnow. We are a full-service digital marketing company, and we can help you out in doing keyword research and in formulating an effective keyword strategy.