Dr Search-ER

Its been a while since my last post, but their is a good reason for that, unfortunately in my other job last week I somehow managed to drill right through my left index finger!!, ouch!, but actually typing with just nine fingers is not too bad, I got lucky and managed to miss the bone, plus it was right at the tip of the finger, so it should heel with no major problems, just a small scar, but whats this all got to do with internet marketing??.


We’ll while sitting at the ER waiting for the Dr, their was a hive of activity between the Dr and the nurse watching their computer screens, some laughter, some pointing at the screen, and it was killing me because I could not see what they were doing!, anyway after about ten minutes the Dr came over from behind the desk to see me, we engaged in conversation finding out that both of us love soccer(football), he then proceeded to tell me about part of a game he watched that I missed last week, apparently their was a huge foul that went unpunished in that game. After talking for a while he sent me into x-ray.


After my x-ray I left the room only to be called right over to the Dr’s desk, “Hey, come here” said the Dr, now at this point im thinking my injury is so bad they are going to have to cut my arm off right their and then on that very large desk!, but no, the Dr then tells me to take a seat right next to him, still nervously thinking im about as done as an old dog, I take a seat ready for the bad news!, “I’ll try and find the game” said the Dr, he then pulls up YouTube on the screen, telling me that in order to kill time some days, they love using YouTube, which is what they were laughing and pointing at before!.


Now the video he was looking for involved two teams and three players, one of the team members runs up behind his team mate and kicks the opposing player in the back, and does not get sent off the field!. Once the YouTube home page comes up on screen, he gets right into trying to search for that video, and this is where I was surprised, he didn’t use any team names, no mention of soccer or any players, his first search was about as broad as the Titanic!, he entered [KICK IN THE BACK] , I sat their just wondering what kind of returns he would get from that, I was going to try and help, but thought I would just let him keep on going, so I could get a look into the many different ways people use search terms.


Now obviously he got more results returned than a sports score encyclopedia, but no surprise, none of them were what he was looking for, so he tried [PLAYER KICK IN THE BACK], again very broad, but at least it was somewhat closer than the first, and the actual returned page at the very bottom did return what he was looking for, but he didn’t see it!, again I stopped myself from pointing this out in order to see his next step, which happened to be [PLAYER KICKED IN BACK TEAMNAME], now TEAMNAME was the actual team playing, and bingo!, the returned results were just what he was looking for, so now we were able to view the video in question.


So the Dr was someone who uses the computer all the time, is always on the internet(especially YouTube), and still for search terms enters the most broadest search term I have ever seen!, but then he does not get the results needed, so in-turn narrows down that search still maintaining the original search term, then when he does get the second results he does not scan down that page to see what he needed right at the bottom, I bet you he does the same thing using Google too, this shows you how people are conditioned to only really scan the top half of the results, now on the third attempt he now knows to narrow it down even more with a targeted attempt by using the team name, and this is where he finds what he was looking for.


By watching this all unfold, I got a first hand(or finger) look into how even a tech savvy Dr uses search, it showed me the progression from a very broad match search, to something allot more targeted, but still following the initial search term, this really shows you that you need to take yourself away from how you search yourself, and watch how future customers actually look for what they need, this is where keyword research is so important, because if you can position yourself on every stage of that broad to targeted search, you increase your chances of being the result clicked on dramatically, you just need to work your way back from your targeted keyword, to the most broadest of keywords you can think of.


If you can, get someone you know and sit them right in front of a computer, ask them if they could buy something now, what would it be?, then ask them to search for it on the computer, then without helping just watch how they do it, and take mental notes, you will probably be surprised at how they get their in the end, if at all.


You could even tell them about your niche site, and ask them to see what they would use to search for that also.


But whatever you do, you do not need to drill into any fingers or any part of yourself to do it, that can just be left to me, i’ll take the pain, and you can take the gain).