Summary

Understanding the "need behind the query" can provide a significant advantage to search marketers. You use this knowledge to deliver the best possible content to searchers at the very time they need it.

This chapter covered the various types of searchers and how they approach their queries. You learned how they view search engine results and how they decide which result to click, all of which is summarized in Table 4-4. You also learned how Web visitors follow a behavior model that describes what they do on your siteand whether they complete that action.

Table 4-4. Understanding Searchers (Different types of searchers use different queries to do the same thingin this case, each searcher wants a book on weight loss.)

Searcher Type	Search Query	What Searchers Want	Why Pages Rank Highly	Why Searchers Click
Navigational	amazon	Amazon home page	Query words in title and URL	Query words in title and snippet
Informational	low carb diet	Deep information from several sites	Text-rich pages with query words	As above, with trusted sources and brands
Transactional	south beach diet	Buy page from bookseller	Query words in title and text	As above, with a great offer

In Part 1 of this book, you have learned the basics of Web searchwhat it is, how it works, and what you can do about it. You have also learned that the searcher drives everything you do as a search marketer. In Part 2 of this book, the focus changes to examine your site's goals and how to measure success. No matter what your organization does, your Web site has a specialized purpose, and search marketing must support that purpose. The next chapter shows how to isolate the exact mission of your site before you embark on any search marketing effort.