Knowing the Three Key Players in Search Marketing
Three main players make up the search marketing landscape, each with a differ-
ent motivation. Understanding who the players are and what they want gives you
a better understanding of how to make search marketing work for your business.
The important players in search marketing are
» Searchers: People who type search queries into search engines
» Search engines: Programs that searchers use to find products, services,
content, and more on the Internet
» Marketers: The owners of websites and other channels that publish content
and make offers to people on the Internet
As a marketer and business owner, you want to maximize the amount of traffic,
leads, and sales you get from search marketing. To do this, you must give search-
ers and search engines what they want.
Understanding searchers’ needs
The key for both marketers and search engines is understanding the mindset of
searchers. By understanding what motivates searchers, marketers and search
engines can serve them better.
People use search engines every day for everything from researching a school
project to looking for reviews for a big-ticket purchase like a car or home. What
motivates searchers is simple: They want to find the most relevant, highest-
quality web pages about anything and everything they’re searching for, and they
want to find those pages now.
If marketers and search engines can satisfy searchers, everyone wins. Searchers
find what they want; marketers get traffic, leads, and sales; and search engines
gain users.
Knowing what search engines want
A search engine company, such as Google, is a business, and like any other busi-
ness, it must generate revenue to survive. As a result, it’s useful to understand
how search engines generate that revenue. If you understand what motivates the
search engine, you can plan your search strategy accordingly.Most search engines generate most of their revenue by selling advertising.
Targeting Search Queries
One way that people discover your business, brands, products, and services is by
using search queries typed in search engines. A searcher navigates to a search
engine, types a keyword or phrase, and taps or clicks a search button, and the
search engine returns popular, relevant results. The searcher clicks or taps one of
those results, and he’s off to the races.
To help make your brand discoverable and available to a searcher, marketers have
two broad categories of search queries to keep in mind:
» Branded queries: Keywords or keyword phrases that searchers type in
search engines when they’re looking for a specific business, brand, product, or
service. The search query “Southwest Airlines,” for example, is a branded
query that Southwest Airlines should target.
» Nonbranded queries: Keywords or keyword phrases that searchers type in
to search engines when they’re not looking for a specific business, brand,
product, or service. The search query “fly to Chicago,” for example, is a
nonbranded query that Southwest Airlines should target.
By understanding the preceding two categories, marketers can target keywords or
keyword phrases to help make their brand discoverable and available to searchers.
Suppose that a searcher is looking for a bed-and-breakfast inn, and she types the
search query “historic bed and breakfast near me” in Google.
This query is a nonbranded search query. The searcher isn’t looking for a particular
bed-and-breakfast; she’s simply researching and discovering historic bed-and-
breakfasts nearby.Defining a search query
Each of the billions of search queries entered in search engines each day contain
the intent and context of an individual searcher. Intent, as it relates to search mar-
keting, involves understanding what the searcher is looking for.
query is made up of the reason why the searcher has that intent. In other words,
intent is the “what” of a search query, and context is the “why.”
Following are examples of intent and context of three people who might be
searching the Internet:
» Person 1: I want to start a vegetable garden because I want to add organic
food to my diet.
• Intent: Want to start a vegetable garden.
• Context: Add organic food to my diet.
» Person 2: I want to start a vegetable garden because I want to spend more
time outdoors.
• Intent: Want to start a vegetable garden.
• Context: Spend more time outdoors.
» Person 3: I want to start a vegetable garden because I want to save money on
grocery bills.
• Intent: Want to start a vegetable garden.
• Context: Save money on groceries.
Each searcher in these examples has the same intent: start a vegetable garden. But
each person has a slightly different reason for wanting to start that vegetable
garden. In other words, the context behind the intent is different in each case.
A search marketer should focus on satisfying both the intent and context of
searchers. Each intent and context represents a query worth targeting. In the pre-
ceding examples, searchers might type any of the following queries in a search
engine:
» “start a vegetable garden” (intent only)
» “add organic food to my diet” (context only)
» “start an organic vegetable garden” (intent and context)
A business that sells vegetable gardening products or services would do well to
target all these keywords based on the intent and context of its ideal customer.
Refer to the customer avatar described in Chapter 1 of this book. Pay particular
attention to the sections about goals, values, challenges, pain points, and objec-
tions to the sale. These sections contain clues to the intent and context of the
terms that your ideal customer might be typing into search engines.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Your happy
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