Customers can find you in a variety of ways. It could be based on their preferences, requirements, or problems.
Some folks may already know what they want and use Google to find it. Others may be just getting started with their studies. Others may already know what they require and compare prices to find the best deal.
At this point in your SEO study and preparation, you should determine:
Personas to target.
Stages of purchase.
Keywords to consider.
For each persona and purchase stage, your goal will be to map your target personas, buying stages, and keywords.
Persona Research
You can begin by analyzing customer service data or demographic data from Google Analytics. You can begin constructing target personas with this information.
An example of possible target personas for a real estate company may be found below.
You’ll want to plan out the various steps they’ll take in their purchase journey once you have your personalities and thoughts of who they are, what they need, and what they want.
Buyer’s Journey
Finally, you can map the path to the probable terms they’ll search for.
Map Keywords to Persona to the Buyer’s Journey
The purpose of this phase is to figure out all of the different ways you can be found and make sure your website is optimized for various purchase stages and keywords.
You’ll begin by looking for primary, root phrases. You can delve deeper into long-tail terms or semantically similar keywords as you progress.
This will enable you to find gaps and opportunities that you may have overlooked during your original baseline and competitive research. Some of these keywords will remain hidden unless you have a thorough understanding of your target audience’s wants and pain concerns.
This stage will wrap up your research and provide you with all of the information you need to design your content strategy and prioritize your on-page SEO efforts.
Evaluate your Existing Content
After you’ve completed your thorough keyword research, examine your site’s existing content to check if it’s appropriately optimized.
Do you have Google-unfriendly sites, near-duplicate pages, or several pages targeting the same term on your website?
Do you have content pieces that correspond to the keyword list you produced earlier?
It’s a good idea to analyze your current content before making a content calendar or editorial strategy. You can determine whether pages should be deleted, merged, or optimized by analyzing your current pages.
You can look for the following elements:
- Primary keyword for page traffic.
- The total number of keywords ranked.
- Count the words.
- Internal hyperlinks.
To conduct a content audit, export all of your pages from your CMS or use an SEO audit tool like Screaming Frog or SEMrush Site Audit to generate a list of your site’s existing pages.
Assess your Site’s Content
After you’ve gathered all of the information, go over the URLs and label the pages as follows:
Keep: The page is optimized and operating well, therefore it can be ignored.
Optimize: Improved on-page SEO could help the page rank higher.
Rewrite/revamp: This is for pages that need to have their content rewritten or redesigned.
Remove: These pages are underperforming and should be taken down. It’s crucial to delete the page from your sitemap, Google Search Console, and any inbound links before doing so.
Consolidate: If you have many pages targeting the same keyword, try consolidating all of the content into one URL and employing 301 redirects for the others.
How to update, consolidate, or optimize pages
It’s time to optimize your content after you’ve identified all of your pages. Some pages may be working fine, but they could benefit from being refreshed. Others may be underperforming and require optimization to rank.
This procedure usually involves two steps:
Existing content is being edited and re-optimized.
Adding new content to the article.
For each page, choose the primary and secondary keywords.
The ideal way to collect this information is to use Google Search Console for ranking pages and your keyword database for non-ranking pages.
This will aid in the identification of target keywords for each page, which you can then enter into your spreadsheet.
Add the major and secondary keywords you’ll need to execute the necessary content adjustments to each page.
Revamp Existing Content
When you’re optimizing pages, make sure you’re keeping or adding the right on-page SEO features. Consider the following:
Optimization of primary keywords.
The main keyword should be included in the:
Meta (page) title: You can change the meta-title of an existing article. To view how your title would appear in a Google SERP, use the Google SERP Simulator. Start the title tag with your major keyword whenever possible, and add modifiers to your titles.
The article’s Meta description can be up to 230 characters long. Make sure the primary keyword is as close to the start of the Meta description as possible.
The title is the first heading of your article. This heading should be an H1. The primary keyword should be included in the title/heading.
The initial paragraph. The major keyword should be within the first 100 words of the first paragraph.
For at least one outbound, the internal link should contain the primary keyword.
Including any more keywords.
All secondary keywords should be naturally introduced into the article. Create an H2 header for each linked keyword. The focus keyword for each paragraph should appear in both the H2 heading and the paragraph immediately following it.
Questions and Answers
Q&A is a simple method to add depth to your articles by identifying related questions. Take the main term and look it up on Google. As section headers, use the questions from the “People also ask” box.
H2 will be the section heading with the question. You should answer the question as fast and succinctly as possible in the next part. Instead of rephrasing the question, provide an immediate response.
“To get into featured snippets, you need to ask questions and answer those using paragraphs, lists, and fast answers,” the opening sentence should say.
