I was having a conversation with a friend recently about creative ways to re-purpose old phone books. She wanted to know what to do with 14 phone books of varying shapes and sizes. We discussed coffee tables, turning them into flip books, booster seats for the kiddos, using the pages as gift wrap and the list goes on. Then I finally thought to ask why she had 14 phone books. I mean, that’s a heck of a lot of phone books. She explained that she inherited them from her predecessor in a new role at work and that they were covered in thick layer of dust and left to rot on a shelf (right behind her desk). She immediately wanted them out of her space because they served no purpose to her or anyone else in the office. She then mentioned that she only searches for things online. At the time I remember thinking it was odd that she would mention how she searched for things and that it was sort of an obvious statement. Doesn’t everyone just Google for it?
That thought sent me off on an internal tangent and I started thinking about my own online search habits. Often I search for a phrase or keyword without having a planned destination or website in mind. If I am looking for a recipe for “white chicken chili” I hope to find several options to browse. Yes, it might be faster for me to go directly to a site like allreceipes.com or epicurious.com but that isn’t my intention. In my mind I need the options to alleviate the fear that somehow I will miss out on some secret award-winning recipe. But if my husband were to conduct the same search he might approach it differently.
Over the last year, user behavior has become more widely addressed in building quality SEO. Search behaviors can be very simple. For example, I want to buy a new bike so I search for “bikes in Kansas City”, open first site that comes up, find a bike, put it in my shopping cart and make the purchase. I’ve got a bike, yay for me; easy; done. But what if it wasn’t that easy?
Search behaviors can also be much more complex. There are a multitude of behavioral factors such as gender, language, age, comfort with technology and searcher goal(s) that can affect how and why people search. As your SEO partner we not only want your web pages to rank well, but to be geared towards the way people search for your product.
More on this topic next week.
Oh, and by the way, I am now the proud owner of 14 phone books. Leave your creative sugguestions in the box and there might be a prize in it for you.
