SEO Content Personas

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Developing personas

Audience personas are ‘ideal customers’ that you create as examples of the target audiences that you want to target for different types of content on your site. Some websites will only have one persona because they’re going after one specific target market, such as VPs of marketing. But a lot of sites, like e-commerce sites or publishers, will have a couple personas, usually two or three. It depends on what your goals are and who you want to target.

There are four key areas when it comes to developing personas that you need to think about:

• Interests: This encapsulates both personal and professional interests, because they tend to overlap. Ask yourself, what is your persona interested in, both professionally and personally? This could include hobbies (fitness, travel), business habits (an interest in productivity tools), or topics they are interested in (sports, news, healthy living).
• Demographics: This includes facts about the persona that are relevant to your product or services, such as age, gender, relationship status, family setup. Be careful to only add demographics that directly correlate to your product or service. For instance, for a sock company, ethnicity doesn’t matter, but for a line of hair products for African-American hair, ethnicity does matter.
• Thoughts: What are your persona’s opinions, values, and lifestyle or business goals? As with demographics, be sure to stick to only thoughts that are applicable to your brand. For instance, it makes sense for a Christian gift store to target Christians, but not so much for a pizza store.
• Needs: What are your personas looking for? How can your company meet their needs, and how does it stand apart from what competitors are doing? Outlining this information can help you understand a persona’s thought process and combat any objections to product or service offerings.

Example personas: sock website

Let’s look at a few example personas for an imaginary sock website:

Danielle

Danielle is 28 years old. She’s a new mother, and she is looking specifically for gifts and for her family.

Danielle is likely searching not only for herself, but for her family and her baby. Therefore, it’s important to craft content around not only her interests, but her family’s (which is an extension of what she is interested in). It’s important to think about why people are searching and who they are searching for, instead of just the person alone.

Derek

Derek is 35. He is budget-conscious, so he cares a lot about price, but he also cares about quality and fashion.

Derek is likely only searching for himself. He cares about his appearance. This means that your company’s socks are an extension of what he will look like to others, so your content needs to reflect that reality. You need to create content that appeals to his needs (in this case, looking sharp without breaking the bank).

Clare

Clare is 44. She’s a practical searcher, so maybe she just searches for ‘women’s socks’, instead of ‘high-quality affordable socks’, like Derek might. She also is a frequent traveler and speaker, so likely isn’t at home a lot.

Clare would want an easy-to-understand shopping process that has fast shipping, so her order gets delivered before her next trip.

How personas impact SEO content

There are several different ways that personas impact SEO content:

• Appeal: By getting a glimpse into who to write content for, you can ensure your content appeals to the right audience.
• Correct voice: Personas help you use the correct voice when creating content.
• Keeps the audience in mind: Personas help ensure you’re creating content for the users, not for yourself.