Optimize Your Business Growth with a Seamless SEO Marketing Funnel

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let's look at the sales funnel and how it relates to search queries this is very helpful for search engine optimization because you can learn something about where someone is in the sales funnel by the types of queries that they make let's begin however with a brief introduction to the sales funnel itself the sales funnel often consists of three phases called top of the funnel middle the funnel and bottom of the funnel the purchase icon here on this graph shows what would be whatever goal you want the person to complete if you're an e-commerce site or a brick-and-mortar business then maybe purchase literally means buying something at your site or buying something at your store however if you're a non-profit maybe purchase just simply means signing up for an event or volunteering when we think of people on the top of the funnel the top of the funnel relates to people defining their challenge so they have a problem or they have some kind of intent and they're just looking to define it so imagine that you are going to a wedding and you're trying to figure out what kind of clothing to wear based upon the weather you know you're looking for ideas you're doing question type queries middle the funnel is where someone has transitioned into where they're comparing different options so they've defined their problem now they're looking at different options and refining those options based upon whatever criteria is relevant to them it might be price it might be proximity or availability of different types of products when people transition into the bottom of the funnel the bottom of the funnel is where they're looking at different solutions specifically so they've decided on what their decision criteria are and now they're looking at maybe different brands or different options do I build this myself or do I have someone come and build it for me do I try to fix my bathroom or do I hire someone to fix my bathroom those are very bottom of the funnel kinds of behaviors so that is the sales funnel top of the funnel middle funnel bottom of the funnel and we might ask ourselves how is this relevant to search engine why are we talking about the sales funnel well the reason is because almost everyone begins their purchase process using search queries that is they are googling or banging stuff and trying to learn about the different solution that they're seeking prior to ever making contact with a brand so by the time that someone actually reaches out to a brand or has a brand experience they've traveled down that sales funnel quite a ways and so we need to take that into account so the interesting thing is that we can tell based upon search behaviors kind of where people are within the sales funnel so if we look at different queries that is we look at different search engine result pages we can actually see maybe where people are so in the top of the funnel people are often querying things that are either questioned formats they tend to have very low technical language they're not using the correct terms so if you're in a highly technical field the kinds of queries that people are using is they're trying to learn about their problem or not going to use the correct technical language and there tends to be lower competition in the top of the funnel queries you know let's see a lot of ads because it's just harder to target those people because it's such broad types of queries in the middle of the funnel the types of queries that occur become more like comparisons so this option versus that option or compare these two options that's very middle the funnel types of queries and if you search for something like that you're gonna see a middle of the funnel kind of result you'll start noticing that ads begin showing up in the search engine result pages in middle of the funnel queries bottom of the funnel queries search queries are tend to be very branded there tends to be a lot of ads showing up and much higher competition purely because it's so close to the purchase so when things are close to the purchase it tends to have more competition more people are vying for those bottom of the funnel search queries and we can illustrate this with an example so here's a very kind of you know maybe tail case example but let's say that we are we have a house and we want to widen our driveway and before we begin widening our driveway we were not sure whether or not we need special permits for that ok so just imagine this use case here I'm going down the sales funnel for this I need to build a driveway ok in the top of the funnel the questions are very much like I don't know what my problem is right what if like what if my driveway cross crosses someone else's land is that a problem do I need special permits for that like how do I what should I do about that in the middle of the funnel we'd see things that I start using technical language I start using the correct terminology where I say oh you know what these are I either need a right-of-way from my neighbor or maybe we need to talk about getting an easement you're not going to see that kind of terminology often in the top of the funnel because it's considered more technical language right and then in the bottom of the funnel that's where we're you know deciding whether or not we're gonna build this driveway ourselves or if we're going to hire somebody else to build a driveway for us in this case you can see an example at the top that says you know Sanderson's gravel and driveway contact right this is a query that I'm running to find a particular type of business by their name and I'm looking to contact them right I'm very close to actually making that purchase and making a decision so here again we see these types of queries taking place what is the top of the funnel query it's a question what is the middle of the funnel type of query very classic is going to be a comparison and what's the bottom of the funnel type of query we're gonna see branded search queries a lot more competition for that business when we think about where SEO works what we're trying to do right is it plays a decent role in placing your brand higher up the funnel so we could say we are going to try to attract people to our website with these question base and comparison type queries maybe give them a compelling offer see if we can get their email address and then move them or nurture them down to the bottom of the funnel now they have brand awareness so SEO plays an important role in attracting and developing brand awareness higher up the funnel and then bringing them down to the bottom of the funnel where ads become more competitive