Being tasked with developing search personas for the type of person that may visit the site I am creating has caused me to think about the importance of knowing your audience. In an article from Search Engine Journal titled “7 Methods To Research & Analyze Your Audience For SEO”, I was able to further investigate this topic. An overarching theme was the importance of not only identifying your ideal website visitor, but also understanding what motivates them.
The first method identified was to use keywords to gather demographics data. The article suggests using Google Trends to determine the demographics of the people searching top keywords. Some examples of demographics that can be useful are age, gender, and geographic location. The second method is to identify who is visiting your website to see if it is aligned with the keywords you have chosen to research. The third method is to analyze other brands and competitors by using tools like Quantcast and Audiense to gain insight into the audience and to learn what other keywords may be relevant to your audience. The fourth method is to use social insight such as looking into your company’s social media pages if applicable. The fifth method is to send out surveys to gather information about basic demographics, overall interests, pain points, and needs. The sixth method is to identify questions that your users are asking. This is helpful to anticipate the long-tail queries of your potential audience. Some tools to do so are BuzzSumo and Semrush. The final recommendation was to research secondary data to fill in the gaps.
I felt like this was a helpful starting point of overall recommendations to gain insight into the audience and what they desire. A lot of these methods and tools were very aligned with what we discussed in class.
3 Responses
Hi Abigail!
I like your point about personas being more than just knowing your audience but also knowing what motivates them. While this is ultimately the goal of persona identification, I feel like it can be easy to get carried away on random facts about your personas that you forget why you’re even making those facts up.
Overall, great post – lots of insightful stuff about personas here!
Hey Abby!
I loved your distinction beyond just identifying your customers and actually understanding them. It is one thing to say that young college students are searching your website, but to know why they are searching is crucial to being able to actually serve them well. The method of using social media pages was a suggestion I hadn’t thought of before, since I tend to think of social media offering insight on the company, but you’re right that it also provides insight into the followers and people who engage with the account.
I think all of these tips were really helpful, and I appreciated the fact that you also included other resources we could use to help in our research process.
I love how you simplified this into seven steps! It’s so important to understand your audience and the terminology they use to correctly implement your SEO strategy. I also appreciate how you listed specific tools.