More of your client’s competition is investing in search engine optimization (SEO). This is making it more difficult to maintain your client's spot in the top search results. Keyword stuffing has destroyed what used to be the easiest way to optimize SEO. Now, according to an article by Search Engine Land, what you need to focus on is behavioral analytics.

Optimize SEO: Behavioral Analytics

According to Square 2 Marketing, “User behavior analytics are a set of marketing and SEO metrics that give us insight into what behaviors users are taking when they come across your website.” These behaviors include:

• How much time a consumer is spending on your client’s webpages and on their website in general
• What they’re clicking on
• How many of your client’s webpages they’re browsing during each session

When you understand what consumers are looking for on your client’s webpages, you can more easily optimize SEO. By tailoring your client’s SEO to provide searchers with information that they feel is valuable, your client’s content will appear in more searches and have a greater chance of being clicked on.

Need more guidance on where to start with behavioral analytics? Here are a few tips from Search Engine Land.

ROI is More Important than Traffic

Sure, it’s great to have a lot of visitor traffic on your client’s webpages. But your ultimate goal is to help your client increase their revenues, right? You can’t generate a good ROI for your clients if you’re not converting the website traffic. When you optimize SEO, “The end goal is to attract visitors that provide your business with value instead of attracting a ton of non-​converting visitors (even if your content does satisfy their search intent),” writes Search Engine Land.

By focusing on behavioral analytics, you increase your chances of attracting valuable traffic to your client’s site instead of anyone you can manage to intrigue. “Start by examining what high-​value visitors are searching for and feeding this back into the content that you product going forward,” says Search Engine Land. This way, your SEO is focused on ROI. And when you optimize SEO for ROI, you’re showing your client that your services are worth investing in.

Use First-​Party Data Instead of Keyword Research

First-​party data, according to Search Engine Land, is, “data that your clients possess regarding their visitors.” This data focuses specifically on what your client’s visitors are looking for when they click on your client’s links and how they interact with your client’s site once they’re there.

Search Engine Land gives the example of orthodontists that optimize SEO. Without first-​party data, they may only incorporate keywords such as orthodontics and braces into their SEO strategy. That’s exactly what every one of their competitors is doing. And it doesn’t differentiate the client as an expert in their industry.

Cue first-​party data. By examining how searchers interact with the client’s website, you can identify what information they find valuable and are therefore searching for. For example, searchers could be inquiring about the prices of braces, the variety of options the orthodontist offers, how long they have to wear retainers after the braces come off, etc. This all translates to keyword data you can use to optimize SEO. By creating a FAQ page that answers all these questions, you’re not only adding more relevant keywords that will aid your client’s online visibility, you’re creating a valuable resource that searchers will be more likely to interact with. And when searchers find valuable content on your client’s website, that increases the likelihood that the searchers will become customers.