Map keywords to personas and user journeys

Michael says: "SEO has not changed dramatically in the last seven years, but Google has changed. They're going down a more hyper-personalised route. The way to account for that in SEO is by mapping keywords to personas, and then mapping those to user journeys. Then, you can create hyper-personalised content at the various stages the user will go through on their process."

How many personas should a typical business have?

"It depends on what the data says and how many business units they have. Ultimately, it's about what they're trying to target. A given business unit might have 3-4, depending on the data.

If you want to target, say, different populations based on ethnicity then you're going to need a variety of personas. However, if you're trying to target personas based on specific needs you may not need as many. It's dependent on your business goals and your data."

If keywords are quite similar across different personas, would you aim to make one page suit multiple personas?

"It depends on the query. Different user types may have different needs from the same keyword. We're seeing more of that as people's searches evolve. You can get this data directly from Google itself by looking at 'People Also Ask'. Start with a given query, click on the next one in PAA, and you'll see how that journey evolves. You could find specific user needs for specific user types. To that end, you may have to create multiple pages for the same query.

Google is getting very close to being able to identify that if you love video games, but you only love Nintendo, then you don't love PlayStation. Then, it won't show you results for PlayStation when you Google 'video game'. In the future you're going to have hyper-personalised results based on user context and what has been showcased to Google over time.

Google have something they call affinity segments. You can see them in GA and target against them in paid ads. They also have in-market segments, where it predicts potential purchases based on activity across Google. We're thinking about the future of SEO here. The way to account for it is to already be thinking about content in this matrix way, not just aiming for a given keyword like we always do. Google is becoming smarter than just giving iPhone information when someone searches for 'iPhone'. If someone's searching for 'cell phone', and it predicts that they can't afford an iPhone based on their search history, then the results will all be related to Android. They are developing the ability to account for your attitudes, interests, and opinions.

With this happening, you're going to have to create multiple pages targeting the same query, so that you can capture different parts of your target market. Right now, people have one page that's trying to speak to multiple parts of the market. This doesn't work as well because you don't know if they will land on the right section. If the user reads the first blurb and there's no quick link to what they're looking for, then they leave the page.

Google's going to get more specific and you're going to have to create content that speaks to specific personas. It's the same as making landing pages for paid media that speaks to a very specific type of messaging that you want to align with."

Is it possible to target multiple personas on the core purchase funnel, where the buyer journey is more standard?

"Absolutely, but there may still be opportunities to add nuance and have the message match up with the specific person. Let's say you're selling clothing and a user is looking for a maternity dress. Your site will have other types of dresses as well. If you have messaging that speaks to maternity, all throughout the funnel, then that user is going to feel that the business understands their needs. It creates more opportunities to delight them. If you continue to aim for the middle, the experience for that user isn't any different from buying on Amazon, so why wouldn't they go to Amazon?

There are a lot of nuances to think about, beyond just how the content aligns with the targeted keyword. You need to consider how to make sure that the user knows they're in the right place, with a business that is looking to specifically connect with them. It's almost a combination of SEO and CRO, or SEO and branding. It's about more than just getting someone to land on a page because they typed in a broad keyword."

Should you also develop more conventional on-site SEO throughout these pages, to build authority for the keyword phrases?

"Absolutely, those mechanics don't change. That's what I mean when I say that SEO hasn't changed meaningfully in seven years. The mechanics of how to build a page and target keywords is pretty dialled in. When building topic clusters, you now want to look at the keywords that group with your target keyword. Whatever your phrase is, there's going to be a series of topics around it that you want to have content about and have internal links to. It clarifies to Google that you know what you're talking about, because you have what they expect for the topic. You also need to account for co-occurrence and things like that.

It's going to become more complex. It may already be more complex than our tools are presenting it as. When you put a keyword into a tool, it looks at the top 20 results, and the co-occurring entities and phrases, and it tells you to use one phrase more or one phrase less. However, Google is probably already looking across different search phrases to determine that, rather than looking at it in such a linear way."

Should you design your content style based upon persona as well?

"A lot of people think about sticky notes when they think of personas. They see a persona as '18-24 years old, Gen Z', etc. What I'm talking about is a segment of your user base that you're trying to target, which needs to be represented by data. I think of Googlebot as a persona. None of these personas should overpower the others. You need to think about the considerations of any given audience, and those have to be requirements for how you build your content.

You still need copy on the page, for example, but you have to consider how the user will experience it. If short-form copy resonates with a target audience, you might use more expandable divs or accordions, so the page has a sparse experience. Then, users can find more information by opening those up.

There are a lot of ways to solve these problems. However, there are constraints that you need to be mindful of if you want to reach the ultimate goal. If you want search traffic, conversions, and multiple audiences to be targeted, then you need to think about those things while you're creating content."

How do you know whether to target longer-tail phrases that are more specific, and there may be less data for?

"Back in 2011, there was a tool called Trendistic. You could put in a query, and it would show you how that query was trending across Twitter. At the time, I compared the results there to Google Trends, and there was almost a 1-1 correlation between them. That doesn't mean that because something's trending on Twitter it's going to trend on search, but there's a high likelihood that it might. If you're seeing a breakout query, throw it into your social channels and see how much chatter there is around it. You can use that as a proxy for how much organic search traffic you might have.

Beyond that, test using paid media channels. Put the query into Google Ads and do a test on a landing page to see how much traffic it gets. In some cases, it's a leap of faith. Even if you're getting data from a keyword research tool, it's not always a true depiction of the exact number of people that are searching for a term anyway.

At some point, you have to trust your judgement that the data is telling you it's something your audience wants. If it makes sense, in the user journey, then make the content anyway. There's going to be value that you get out of it from an assisted conversion perspective, and a variety of other reasons. There's no reason not to create the targeted content, if you can vet it in other data that you have across your data sets."

What metrics do you look at to measure the success of these kinds of activities?

"You mainly look at conversion rates. It's also increased click-through rates from Google because we're thinking about this as early on as your page title and meta description. Even if you're not in the top three results, when you make adjustments to align with personas, you will see the CTR increase. The metadata is the advertising tagline for the page, so the better that your copy aligns with who you're trying to reach, the more likely they are to click on it. Ultimately, it's more likely that they will convert.

We've had clients see much better conversions from our SEO work than they have from other agencies in the past, and it's largely because of that approach. It's very much measured in how it impacts business objectives and often that's seen in your conversions."

What is something that you suggest SEOs should stop doing to focus more time on targeting personas?

"Stop focussing on content length. So many people are writing blog posts saying content has to be 1500 words long or it's not going to work. That's the wrong approach. Google is getting far better at aligning content with intent, and some intents require shorter content. The better that you align your content with what people actually want, the better it's going to perform. Rather than sitting around trying to squeeze out 1500, 2000 or 4000 Words on a subject, first think about what your audience actually wants. That way you can spend more time on what's going to be more effective."

You can find Michael King over at iPullRank.com.