Use reverse search to create relevant content

How to produce content that is relevant for your audience? Simple question, easy answer. Use google data via a reverse search to discover what's relevant for them. No need to tell; relevant content is content that gets seen. 

 Fact. 90% of pages get no organic traffic. These stats are probably even worse for social content. Presuming you produce content to get noticed by your audiences, not to check the box in the boardroom. Therefore, dive in the google data to improve your reach. 

 All written below goes for web content and for social content. The two main traffic drivers are still SEO and social. 

Use a reverse search to discover your audience content needs. 

What is a reverse search? Simply said, if you type your product or brand name in the Google search box, what is the second word that pops up? You can do this for your product, your brand, the industry and even for your competitors. A great way to get the insights based on actual data.  Small side note, do this in google for web and mobile text search, use YouTube for video and maybe even hop on the voice search train. 

This gives you insights on the content needs related to your product, brand or industry. This saves you time and budget by producing content that resonates with your audience. Next to this, you can claim your leadership by showing you know what are the hot topics in relation to your product and industry. 

 The four main benefits

1. Reveal the top 3 of their concerns: what is your audience searching
2. Discover the unknown topics: you think in features, they look for solutions
3. Use the search intent to give them your solution
4. Know the volume to prevent producing unread content

Reveal the top 3 concerns

By getting the google data you have the top 3 of their concerns. You will be surprised what your audience is searching for. Speaking from experience, 10 out of 10 times this is not the top 3 you think it is. 

Automotive example

We did a search on the brand name, excluding the specific models. The number one search was, by far, ‘timing belt’. We never expected that. Why a timing belt? This is an expensive maintenance issue. 

The questions discovered in google and backup by our car engineers: Why do I need to replace it around 150k km? Answer: it wears out. Why replace it before it breaks? Answer: there is a lot of force on this belt. If it breaks, it breaks fiercely destroying lots of other parts in the engine. Why is this so very expensive? Answer: because it is in the lower part of the engine and that all needs to be taken out to access the belt. 

The result is an informational video and a blog for SEO, adding the call to action: book your appointment now.

Discover unknown topics

As mentioned above you will be surprised what’s going on in your audience's minds. What you think is relevant, most of the time is not relevant for them. You think in features, they think in finding a solution for their problem. 

Coffee example

For a coffee producer we did a search to discover the content needs. What do they want to know related to coffee? Long story short, people globally want to know ‘how to make a cappuccino’. Striking detail, our website didn’t even rank on these keywords. Nor did our competitors. 

Hence amazing content opportunities to stand out and claim the leadership ‘we know coffee’, on the web and on social. 

Use the search intent 

‘If you want to rank in Google in 2021, you need to be the most relevant result for the query. First and foremost, that means creating content that aligns with search intent.’ https://ahrefs.com/blog/search-intent/

For your content this most likely is the ‘informational search intent’. Your audience is looking for information to solve their problem. Your content gives them the answer. 

Your video on ‘how to make a cappuccino’ gives them actionable tips and tricks to create that perfect moment of relaxation with a coffee in the comfort of their own home. 

Know the volume

Last not the least, by doing a reverse search you get an idea about the volume. How many people are looking for that specific topic? An indication of the market potential and reach of your content. We all know those branded blogs crafted with lots of energy and budget, yet not getting any visitors.

Finance industry example

Creating a blog series about ‘how to manage your personal finance’ can cost up to 10 or even 15k euros, depending on the videos . Result, three blogs with video, and no visitors. The topics selected for the videos were not backed up by google data. 

If they had done their homework, they would have known that the search volume on these topics was very low. Meaning, nobody gives a sh*t and there is no interest in this topic. So why create content? 

Key take aways

To produce relevant content use a reverse search on google. The main benefit is that you get insights based on data on what your audience needs. Discover their problems and create content on how your product or service gives them a solution.  This saves you time and energy by not producing not seen content. And you can claim your leadership along the way. 

Next step

Making this actionable is pretty simple. This reversed search on Google and YouTube  will cost you roughly between € 7k for local and € 15k for global. With the condition, you have a crystal-clear and tight briefing for your agency. 

This can be your media agency or your creative agency. You can also hire a specialized data agency. Keep in mind it takes more time to brief a new agency as they do not know your brand and are not familiar with the organization.

Speaking from experience, my advice: use your creative agency. As the media agency is more inclined to develop an SEO and SEA strategy. That is exactly not what you are looking for. You do not want a strategy or procuration for SEA. You want insights into the audience's needs to use in your (creative) content strategy.

How to brief your agency

As this type of research is quite new for agencies, a few suggestions for what to include in the brief. Drill down the desired output and make sure they get your objectives and what you are looking for. Your executive brief should fit on 1 A4 in simplicity. If you need a death-by-powerpoint-deck, you have to learn to brief. The better your brief, the better the outcome.

• Objective: insights for content strategy
• Themes: list of topics you want to be found on
• Keywords: industry, brand, and product
• Competitors names: stick to main competitors
• Countries or region: stick to the most important
• Language(s)

Don’t include the details of your audience or personas. Keep it open to discover.

Ask the agency to do broad research. The goal is to find out if there are more keywords or specific combinations used. Can these be grouped, is there a common theme, is there a trend? What are the top 10 searches for your industry, brand, and your competitors?

Need help?

In need of help to get this started? Within a few days, I can help you. From brief to briefing your agency and reviewing the deliverables. As I have done this several times I know the pitfalls and how to get the result you want. Email me at fleurwillemijnvanbeinum@gmail.com or contact me on LinkedIn. 

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