Creating quality content that resonates with your target audience is more important than ever.
But how do you do that?
Well, you need to understand your audience and their search behaviors.
That’s where search listening can help.
In fact, over 500,000 marketers use AnswerThePublic every month for search listening. Not part of this group? You’re missing out.
The simple truth is that search is evolving and will continue to evolve based on how people use it.
Search listening helps you stay ahead of the game by figuring out what your audience wants by analyzing search data and giving you helpful insight into topics they’re interested in, questions they ask, and the language they use.
With this info, you can make better keyword choices, understand your audience, and increase the value of your brand. Sounds great, right?
What Is Search Listening?
Search listening is when marketers like you analyze online search behavior to find out about the audience’s interests, intent, and behavior. The process starts with looking at questions people search online and the words they use in those queries.
Digital marketers monitor web analytics (like traffic sources, search volume, etc.) to figure out why people ask those questions. Typically, businesses pay the closest attention to conversations related to a particular topic or industry related to their lines of work.Say you work for an outdoor equipment company and want to identify gaps in your content strategy. Your brand’s website has a low click-through rate (CTR), and you can’t figure out why.
You can look at the phrasing people use in their searches to identify trends and create new strategies for marketing based on those patterns. You may notice people want “eco-friendly outdoor gear” or “sustainable outdoors equipment” based on search terms.
With this data to back it up, you can create website content showcasing the sustainable materials in the company’s products or launch a social media campaign promoting the company’s sustainability values and commitment.
Once you have the data from your search listening efforts, especially for keyword research, you can get creative to address whatever you find.
By analyzing and understanding search queries, you can more easily develop content that provides value or addresses your customers’ pain points. Higher-value content leads to more targeted traffic and better user engagement.
Benefits of Search Listening for Digital Marketers
You want to know your audience’s needs, interests, and preferences. You also need to understand how to create relevant and engaging content.
This is easier said than done.
The good news? Search listening makes it easy to get inside your target audience’s mind. All you need are the right tools.Search listening gives insight into what words and phrases people use when talking about relevant topics, products, or industries. This gives you a leg up on keyword research, as you’ll know what people really search for when they have a specific intent.
A few of the other benefits that search listening offers include:
A viable advantage over competitors.
More relevant and effective search engine marketing (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) approaches.
Better return on investment (ROI) based on enhanced marketing campaigns.
Improved customer experience by offering useful, relevant content.
Increased brand loyalty by showing customers your value.
Access to new or expanded markets to increase product reach.
What Makes AnswerThePublic the Best Tool for Search Listening?
is a great search listening tool for gaining insights into the questions people ask online. The tool generates a list of questions related to set keywords or topics, which can help you optimize your content and marketing strategies.Using a combination of search data and natural language processing (NLP), AnswerThePublic gives you a visual representation of questions categorized by type.
My tool, AnswerThePublic, also gives related searches and questions sorted by preposition, which help to identify even more keyword options and topics to target in campaigns. That way, you can easily pull the information necessary to better understand the audience you want to target over time.