Topic Timelines

Buyers Decision Journey

Topics play a major part in deciding on the content plan for a website. The journey that people take is frequently through their topic of interest.

The timeline is the element that makes search marketing special. People only search when they want something.

Standard pages take care of the obvious needs of people ‘looking for the brand’.

For clicks from people you don’t know yet, business websites get the vast majority of their traffic from Search Engines. The primary way to define an audience of website visitors is the topic they searched for.

We build content around the topics. In fact, the first thing we would do is make a list of your important topics.

Topics Define the Audience

Why define the audience? Because the audience gives you more to go on as opposed to keywords, which are ‘fragments’ for your imagination.

A topic audience is bigger than a keyword; you get context. You can ‘see’ the journeys.

Topics are actually a very traditional way of defining an audience; in the world of magazines and in television where channels and programs let you target interests. But Search Marketing is more special than television or magazines because the primary interest is your content.

Your audience is searching for you, and what you have to say on the subject. It’s unique.

Is it advertising? Yes. Is it marketing? Yes, most definitely. We can wrap messaging and positioning around our target audiences.

Standard pages take care of the obvious needs of people ‘looking for the brand’.

For clicks from people you don’t know yet, business websites get the vast majority of their traffic from Search Engines. The primary way to define an audience of website visitors is the topic they searched for.

We build content around the topics. In fact, the first thing we would do is make a list of your important topics.

The thing is, what they are most interested in, is the topic. The topic is the thing, the entity.

It’s not good or bad, it is what it is, and we can make of it what we will. When we think of a whole topic as the audience, then we get the context of their search.

The audience’s overall search is not just the fragment that is a keyword.

Why do we visit websites, and what does ‘just browsing’ mean?

Through years of testing and measuring producing patterns, we see ‘intent’ to make different decisions in the keywords visitors use to search.

There is a direct link between the search and the stage they are at. When we get to see those keywords in a topical group, we can learn to ‘listen’ and respond to the search instead of guessing.

Just browsing means we are not buying yet.

We are still figuring out whether to be interested or not, still deciding what impact this might have on our lives. We are deciding whether it’s worth doing anything.

It’s a different conversation than ‘buy our stuff’, but it’s just as valuable.

When we click with the visitor, it ‘switches on’ activity from the website. We get movement.

We can make it easier to navigate complex decisions just by thinking it through beforehand. We needed a framework.

It’s good timing

Context tells us what they might have searched for previously, and what they might search for next. It is not always linear, but it kind of is. They might have a spin on it, a specific audience they are a part of.

• What they search for, specifically, the topic, changes over time.
• The different decisions that people make as part of the journey are what the content is for
• It helps us develop a content plan; we start at the bottom.

When someone lands on the right content, and the timing is perfect, then the conversation flows.

Niches to Topics

In combination with the topic are a bunch of overlapping niche keywords.

It might be industry, role or some locations. It may be more than one

How we build sites around the topics, and the niches make all the difference to the visitor. We get more traction when they land on content built for them.