With regards to keyword classification and context, it’s way too an easy task to inject each of our opinions onto keyword phrases. It’s not a thing to need to relate to, engage, and fasten together with your target audience.
As search optimizers, we sincerely hope that searchers mental types of desired content matches the information we have by ourselves and our clients websites.
Nevertheless, the ability to be objective about keywords is important in to truly understand web searchers. As SEO professionals, we not only need to comprehend the words and phrases that our target audiences enter to locate engine, we also have to comprehend the context of keyphrases.
Searcher Mental Models & Search Conditions
What exactly do I mean by context? By context, We are referring to a searcher mental model along with the conditions to which they’re searching.
Questions to consider:
- Is the search being conducted at home or at the job? Or both?
- Will be the searcher using a desktop computer, tablet, or mobile phone?
- Is there a time constraint around the search query, like needing to change ones hotel reservation as a result of delayed flight?
- Or perhaps is the search session the one that lasts in a period of 2-21 days, for example when one is researching something before purchasing?
- In the event the search session is long, would be the keyphrases repeat queries, possibly re-finding queries?
- Is the searcher a newbie, experienced, or expert Web searcher?
Some context could be gathered via Web analytics data along with other types of software. Although not 100% of searcher context. Often, Web searchers tend not to enter their keyword context in the search box.
Keywords Without Context
This is one example from some usability tests my firm conducted last year. We presented over 100 participants using a search box which has a single keyword. The 1st word we presented was the word gas.
Here are a number of images that stumbled on the minds of men (not presented in different particular order):
Images for this word gas.
Most participants immediately thought gas meant the gasoline that installed in their cars. We observed facial expressions of amusement when participants were thinking about belching/burping or farting.
Then, we changed the context. We told participants that the context was obviously a medical/heathcare context.
Not one of them regarded gas main or car fuel. Some participants thought of oxygen. Some (again) thought belching or flatulence. Along with a couple of participants regarded Group A Streptococcus (abbreviation is GAS). So even though the context was more specific while using second question, the keyword associations were quite different.
We next used something possibly simpler when compared to a word: the letter K.
Here are several images that located their marbles after being shown the letter K in the search box (also not presented in different particular order):
Images associated with the letter K
I can tell you my immediate connection to the letter K. It absolutely was quality, like kilobytes. I am a Website design companyPerdeveloper as well as an SEO. I optimize PDFs included in my job. So that is our mental model.
Around 10% of participants associated the letter K with Vitamin K, available in a few of the foods shown above. Keywords associated with Vitamin K Supplement include vitamin(s), diet, supplement, vegetables, food, and so forth.
In case you put lots before the letter K, it could completely change the context:
Which are the words linked to 401(k)? These are probably words linked to savings, retirement, financial planning, and money.
Which are the words connected with 18K and 14K? Probably jewelry, metals (gold, silver, platinum), gemstones, etc.
Notice how simple things like just one number or even a single word affects context. Notice how users/searchers expect to see different words on webpages determined by their search conditions and mental models.
And, as I stated previously, searchers tend not to often type their context into search queries.
The Untyped Context
Labeling can be an area the location where the parts of information architecture and search engine optimisation overlap. Portion of my job, as a possible information architect as well as an SEO professional, is usually to understand how a client’s target audience organizes and labels content on-line.
One of my most eye-opening and humbling experiences as a possible information architect was to know that Web searchers tend not to organize content according to niche research data. With every card sorting and other usability tests, I heard (and recorded) comments that have been unlike niche research data.
Individuals don’t categorize insurance, travel, property, healthcare, food and recipes, etc. by topic but via other means. They may first categorize themselves as an element of friends then search by topic.
They don’t enter their personal information (What group am I in?) from the search box. But they anticipate seeing their context browsing results and corresponding landing pages 100% of the time. They expect you’ll see text, images, and also color linked to their context.
I constantly observe SEO professionals and web owners use volume of queries to architect a web site when users/searchers organize content by less frequent keyword combinations.
From the examples above, look that the single word or a single letter changed the searcher context and you may not see these words in analytics data or perhaps in the correct volume.
That does not mean to discount keyword research tools. I have used them since 1995. They offer useful data, designed for labeling. On The Other Hand urge SEO professionals to take into account alternative ways of understanding searcher context.
- Field studies
- User interviews
- Usability testing
- Observing users/searchers in their natural search environment
- Diary studies
As information architect Peter Morville produced in his Consumer Experience Design article years ago,we must strike a distinctive balance on each project between business goals and context, user needs and behavior, along with the available combination of content.
And from noted search expert Richard Zwicky in their Context Within Search and Optimization article, This means of helping guide the various search engines to better understand the context of your document, so your engine can properly direct searchers right document, thereby ensure relevant results, can be a the core of the any good search engine optimisation firm have to do. It ought to be essentially of each search engine algorithm, but obviously context is just not yet there.
Help search engines like yahoo understand context. Open the eyes to other research methodologies. You won’t regret it with regards to website design.