Two ways planning customer journeys can improve your SEO strategy

SEO is a broad discipline. Because of this, we often find people get too immersed in perfecting either technical, on-page or external SEO. One way to combat this and create a well-rounded SEO strategy is to focus on the customer journey.

Putting emphasis on the customer journey helps you align your strategy with what’s valuable, answering key questions to help them convert.

Don’t believe it? Here’s two ways creating customer journeys can help improve your website’s SEO.

1. Mapping keywords and topics to the journey

At different stages of your journey, your buyer persona will have a range of different questions.

For example, during the awareness stage, you’d use an SEO tool, such as Ahrefs, to see what questions people are searching for. Unlike other stages of the funnel, these will be more general queries that won’t immediately link back to your services, but will educate the reader on what they need to do to solve a specific problem. 

So, let’s say you’re a working for a building compliance business, and are running a campaign on asbestos management based on new legislation. The reader hasn’t heard of your business - but that doesn’t mean they won’t buy from you during the decision stage. 

By providing good, educational content during the awareness stage, you have the power to influence by becoming a thought leader, and then sell them your relevant services when it’s relevant in their journey. 

So, some questions a building compliance company could answer would be:

• What does the new legislation mean for my building portfolio?
• Quick guide to new asbestos legislation.
• 5 ways the new asbestos legislation will affect building management.
  
  

During the initial awareness phase, take terms that you know are going to educate them about their issue. The aim here isn’t to sell your services or promote your business, but educate.

Therefore, mapping keywords and topics to your journey can help to correctly focus your content, providing users with the right information at the right time. 

Want to learn how to maximise your reach online and boost your organic traffic? Download your free copy of ‘the ultimate guide to SEO’. 

2. Analyse and measure your conversions

No matter how much time you spend mapping keywords and topics for each stage of the funnel, there’s no guarantee that your content will convert first time, every time. 

When you publish blogs, you won’t get the same results from all of them. Some will convert better than others, some will get found, and others may not produce any results at all.

It’s important to set clear goals, and look to your content to see:

• Are your chosen keywords attracting people to your page? 
• Are there potential gaps in your plan that you’re not addressing?
• How many users answer your call to action. Depending on the stage of your journey, this could be downloading an infographic or booking a call with a member of your team.
• Where they go next. Did they stay on your website, or did they exit completely?
• If they return to your website within three days. Did you make a lasting impression, or have you faded into the background?
  
  

Also, using CRO tools, such as heatmaps, to see how users spend time on your page will help you understand where people dropped off, what they looked at, and, most importantly, where they clicked.

All this information helps you create more compelling content by understanding what real users found important, what they didn’t, and if your CTA is actually working.

Once you have the results, you can keep optimising your content, and set realistic goals for the next quarter. Then you can see where users are dropping off the funnel, you can address the potential reasons why, such as:

• Focusing too heavily on awareness keywords.
• Choosing keywords or questions that are off-topic from your blog or content.
• Including long-tail keywords that your persona wouldn’t search for.
  
  

Creating content for users and search engines

Ultimately, having a clear, focused objectives to hit is crucial to creating a successful SEO campaign. 

Customer journeys can help you understand who you’re targeting, how they best receive information, and what keywords they’re likely to look for. This can help define their needs and expectations, while managing your expectations with realistic goals. Over time, you will find gaps in your content, keywords, or tone of voice that you can amend and add to, helping you convert more leads.

While clearly defined customer journeys are key to SEO, they shouldn’t be done in isolation. Rich customer journeys need to be implemented with a whole SEO and marketing strategy, helping you to understand:

• Who you’re targeting
• Why your services are relevant
• What keywords are associated with relevant pages
  
  

This will help you to build a rich user and SEO experience, allowing potential clients and search engines to gain information from your website.