• By michelle
• In SEO
• Posted May 20, 2014

Deep Crawl: The Next Frontier in SEO Evolution

Remember the last time you bought a book on Amazon? There’s a solid chance that you spent a good portion of time reading customer reviews and checking out related products that people with similar tastes purchased.

In doing so, your visit to Amazon.com added to its deep crawl scorecard. Google measured how long you spent hanging out on that product page, and how far you went inside the website.

In part, this is why typing “Amazon” into the Google search bar yields the e-commerce website as the top hit. After all, you don’t get anything related to wildlife or the environment until the end of page two.

This explains why deep crawl remains of paramount importance in the quest for your small business’ visibility.

Or you can look at this way: in the Great Search Engine War, you’re equipped with two SEO weapons.

Your keywords are akin to a Swiss Army Knife. Keywords remain a piece of the SEO puzzle, but at the end of the day they’re small potatoes.

On the other hand, deep crawl is more like a rocket launcher. If you can create a message that keeps your visitors reading, deep crawl is the most powerful tool in your arsenal.

Unlike all the SEO magic tricks out there in Internet Marketing land, there’s not any template formula that guarantees your prospects will keep reading your message.

Short of chaining your audience to their desk chair, it takes serious thinking about relevance, some split-testing, and a host of other ninja marketing moves.

No worries, we’ll get you started with these three deep crawl strategies.

Write to an Audience of One

Even though the well-known marketer Fairfax M. Cone passed away over 30 years ago, he once gave advice that remains even more relevant today than it did in the 1960s.

“Good advertising is written from one person to another. When it is aimed at millions it rarely moves anyone.”

In other words, write to an audience of one. This doesn’t mean that you pigeonhole your target market into a simplified archetype; Cone’s advice directs us to make one customer the nucleus of the copywriting story.

Take a gander at your latest product page. Did you write that your product has helped millions of people? Even if it has, comments such as that will make your reader feel like a face in the crowd, instead of an individual with unique thoughts and feelings.

When you write to an audience of one, you make your reader feel more important. The more important they feel, the longer they’ll stay on your page, and the deeper they’ll crawl into your website.

Curiosity Gets a Click

That subheading sounds a bit like a chick flick from the 1980s, but it’s a statement of truth. When people are curious about something, they’ll find the answer. It’s the miracle of Google that when we want to know something, we collect the information within a few seconds.

That’s why when you spark curiosity in your copywriting, you lead your reader farther down your website rabbit hole.

From headlines to preview descriptions, inquisitiveness boosts the must-click-now urge big time. Find something that you know your future clients want to know, and then give a hint without divulging all the info.

See exactly how this company got 93% open rates.

Hyperlink a similar statement, and your readers keep on your website longer.

Provide a Way Back

When it comes to deep crawl pitfalls, your customers getting lost is a major one. As we’ve mentioned before, relevance is the real SEO. And when readers can’t find a way back to what they were reading, they’re more likely to leave your website than dig for content.

Related: Forget Keywords. Relevance is the Real SEO Magic.

Whether it’s anchor text or a well-planned navigation menu, your audience won’t get trapped with content they don’t give a crap about. In this way, readers will spend more time on more pages.

Google’s paying attention.

For content that keeps them reading, check out professional copywriting services!