Delight Your Target Audience (and Google) with "Helpful Content"

Building or maintaining a website that delivers tangible business results is done with intention, and requires a strategic process.  Defining a target audience is one of the most important, and helpful, steps in that process. 

At Daybreak Digital Marketing, we spend a lot of time helping our newest clients objectively define the characteristics of their target audience.  To do this well, we spend a lot of time examining the common characteristics of client's best customers, conducting market research, examining digital marketing analytics, and even building "persona" archetypes with tools like these.  In many cases, the end result of this work provides benefits beyond digital content development - clients often take away insights that better inform their day-to-day sales and service efforts.

The benefit of defining a target audience is simple.  Amplifying the right message, to the right audience, delivers the best results.

The simple benefit of defining a target audience becomes much more complex when search engine optimization (SEO) considerations enter the equation. Building a website that's designed for maximum Google search performance requires agencies like ours to consider dozens (more realistically hundreds) of factors that impact on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO. 

Balancing the need for targeted online content with SEO concerns isn't easy, and can often feel like a nearly impossible task.  The perceived impossible task becomes this: to convey two tailored messages to two different audiences (your target audience & Google).

If you've found yourself frustrated to strike this balance, you may be encouraged by the Google search guidance provided by none other than Google themselves.  Below you'll find links and summaries for a few of these great resources.

Building "Helpful Content"

The goal of Google's search business is surprisingly simple: they want to offer the best results for online searches.  It's no secret that artificial intelligence and machine learning play a crucial role in Google search.  What you may not know is that Google is engineering their search engine to prioritize search results that deliver helpful content.  There's a few conclusions to draw from this:

1. In Google's view, "helpful content" is better content!
2. This has the potential to meaningfully simplify the process of creating online content!
3. It's really important to understand Google's definition of "helpful content."

For our benefit, Google has published an extensive guide on "helpful content."

Keep Pace With Changes to Google's Search Algorithm

Are you confused by recent changes to your search ranking for specific Google searches?  So far in 2022, Google has pushed out eight separate updates to their search algorithm!  Keep up with the latest changes by bookmarking Google's list of ranking updates.

Learn SEO with the Help of Google's Podcast

Make the most of your morning commute by subscribing to Google's "Search Off the Record" podcast.  New episodes are released every few weeks, and are available on all major podcasting platforms.