The Psychological Power of Searching

With the online capabilities that we have all come to rely upon in our day-to-day business lives, it is often easy to forget that there is a lot more to it than just searching. In fact, there is a psychological influence behind it and having a deep understanding of that can really positively affect your search results.

Ways to allow psychology to influence your search results

The act of and power of searching has evolved tremendously over time. From a business owner’s perspective, being found on the search engines (and ranking high) is critical to the success of the business. However, from the search engine’s perspective, the important person in that situation is the user, not the business. Of course, both sides need and benefit from the results of the search. Search engines have become so sophisticated over time that they now have the capability of understanding (if you will) what the user wants and needs to quite an accurate extent. Of course, those search engines are also capable of determining which content is well written and which content is not well written. Part of that quality means that the search engines can also determine if the content hits the mark in every way possible. 

If you think about the search process in general, you will realize that it begins with the consumer’s need to gather information on a particular product or service in order to eventually make an intelligent buying decision. Of course, that will not happen right away, not without the research that goes into the process first. The reality is that consumers are far more knowledgeable and sophisticated than they ever were in the past. Consumers nowadays know what they want and they have a fairly decent idea of how to go about getting it. They are more comfortable than ever when it comes to looking for information that will impact their buying decision. Also, they are  not shy about asking questions in order to become more educated about the particular product or service that they are considering.

With the sophistication of search engines, consumers have come to expect to find what they want more easily.

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As a business owner, your objective is to engage your customers and to give them what they want so that they are satisfied and so that they want to keep coming back to you to buy more and more of what you have to offer. If you are able to obtain a deep understanding of what they want and need, you will accomplish those objectives. They are as follows:

• Wrapping your mind around what your customers want and how they feel: When it comes to sitting down and writing content with your customers in mind, it must be spot on. Your content must address what they need and it must address who they are. In order to succeed at that, you will have to work at getting to know what they want and need. You need to bear in mind that it might be easier said than done. There are a few different ways in which you can accomplish that, including gathering information through market research and by interacting with your customers with whom you already share a relationship. An effective approach may be to uncover why your existing customers chose to become your customers. Ask them why they chose to buy from you instead of from someone else. You may be surprised to learn that the more you speak to various people, the more you will start to recognize emerging patterns of behavior and of motivation.

• Write content that connects with other people on an emotional level: First of all, it is important to remember that content doesn’t just mean words on a page. It comes in a variety of forms, including videos, graphic images, blogs, etc. Different people absorb and process content in many different ways. Some people are visual, which is why videos and graphic images work more effectively than written content for them. Having a mix of words and images makes your content appealing and compelling. Considering that your objective is to get people to pay attention to what you are sharing, you want to make it the most interesting that it can be. Of course, you must always remember to share your story (of course, you should have several stories to tell that resonate with the people who are reading your content). 

• Making sure that your content is optimized for the search engines: Search engine optimization (SEO) is critical now and always will be to your success as a business owner. The way that you ensure that your content is optimized is through the use of keywords and key phrases (although, not an over-abundance of them). It is those keywords and key phrases that will allow your content to end up on the top of the search engines’ pages. You will want to pay close attention to analytics as well. That will enable you to identify when something is and is not working. You can then tweak what you are doing accordingly. If you understand the formula, you can make it work for you every time. That is key.

• Wrapping your mind around what makes people share your content with others: This goes back to the psychology and the formula of knowing what to do to produce the results that you desire. If you can figure out how to write successful content, you will truly succeed. If people share your content with other people, you and your business will benefit from that action tremendously. You will get increased traffic, your search engine rankings will be high, and you will have succeeded at boosting your reputation online. Before you know it, you will be positioned as a subject matter expert (SME) and eventually, you will become an influencer. What could be better (besides succeeding at selling your products and services like hotcakes)?

Conclusion

Whether you realize it consciously or not, there is a definite psychology behind the entire searching process and what results from searching. People may look for what you offer but they won’t get close to buying what you are selling if you don’t make it appealing and engaging enough for them to go from Point A to Point B. If you understand what motivates people, you can figure out how to motivate them in your direction. You will come to understand how your people search online and exactly what they are looking for so that you can satisfy their needs.

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