What does your audience want to read? It's one of the most difficult questions for communicators to ask themselves, but there are plenty of ways to find an answer (and one you may not know about). By using the power of search engine optimization tools, for example, you can figure out what your audience is searching for and what the value of those keywords and terms are, which will then help you optimize your content.
At this morning's PR News' SEO Workshop at the Grand Hyatt in New York City, Rae Hoffman, CEO of PushFire, provided a list of 4 tools for PR pros to use to figure out what their readers want to learn more about:
- Übersuggest: A free keyword suggestion tool that delivers myriad suggestions related to a keyword that you want to target. Type in your keyword phrase and Übersuggest gives you related keywords and phrases that people are searching for.
- SEMrush: A keyword research tool that identifies opportunities to optimize content. Among other things, SEMrush helps identify "horizontal keywords," or keywords that are related to the phrase you searched for but don't include the actual words you searched for. This allows you to take a base keyword and expand on it. Paid plans begin at $69.95 per month.
- Search Meter: A free WordPress plugin that keeps track of what's being queried in the search bar on your own website. If you don't already create what your users are searching for, now's the time to start.
- SurveyMonkey: Create a survey for your audience to tell you what they like about what you cover, what they don't like and what topics they'd be interested in seeing more about. Basic plans are free and subscription plans start at $26 per month.
Are there any other SEO tools that you would add to the list regarding how to optimize PR content?
Follow Brian Greene: @bwilliamgreene