Documenting characteristics of your core customer will help you target more efficiently
Before the search engine optimization process and SEO campaign deployment can take place, you need to carefully identify the associated customer demand.
Remember, the customer is the reason SEO is performed. In order to target accordingly, you need to successfully determine the needs of your audience members.
A search persona can help you accurately target. A recent article from Search Engine Watch details the components of a search persona so you can develop one easily.
Five components of a search persona
Search persona component #1 – Know your audience. What defines your perfect customer? What are the search terms they use to find your products? Start a search persona by developing a subscription of your perfect buyer.
The target audience description should include information on age, gender and what specifically they will be searching. As an example, the article from Search Engine Watch sites a shoe supplier selling women’s shoes. It describes the perfect buyer as “a woman, age 18 to 35, searching for Adidas, Asics, New Balance, Saucony, or Nike running shoes.
Search persona component #2 – Audience pain points and how they search to solve them. What is the problem your audience is trying to answer with their search query? At the Mequoda Daily, most of our readers are looking for helpful tips for online publishing and content marketing. Due to this, we look at our analytics and the Google keyword tool to find keywords that are popular with our audience and have a significant search volume.
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Search persona component #3 – Supply solutions. If you content or product is a genuine solution your audience is seeking, offer it to them through a well optimized, landing page that includes very direct calls-to-action.
Search persona component #4 – Evoke attention and interest. At this point, your audience has genuine interest in your product or content. You’ve drawn them to your webpage by optimizing your content to fit their needs and answer their questions. Now it’s time to convert them as a buyer or email subscriber. This way you can stay in contact during the earliest, most fragile part of your relationship.
Search persona component #5 – Know your data. In order to decipher the success of your campaigns, it’s important to track your SEO performance. Are the keywords you’re targeting producing traffic? Are you converting casual visitors to subscribers or buyers during these campaigns? Your data will help you determine if you’re targeting the best keywords, and if your content is effectively aligned with the searcher’s questions.
Do you develop search personas for your target audience? If not, what measures do you take to understand your audience the best? I’d love to read your thoughts in the comments section below.
