How to Align Your SEO Strategy & Buyer Journey — Www.smartbugmedia

How to Align Your SEO Strategy & Buyer Journey

5 min read original

Assuming your customers find you exactly when they are about to purchase is not only ignorant, it is also hur�ng

your ability to grow leads and customers. Although variable from company to company, all customers take a

journey when making a purchase. Today, this journey o!en involves the use of search engines.

How to Align Your SEO Strategy & Buyer Journey — www.smartbugmedia.com h+ps://www.readability.com/ar�cles/xrbcqqwr

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your ability to grow leads and customers. Although variable from company to company, all customers take a

journey when making a purchase. Today, this journey o!en involves the use of search engines.

As a marketer, I must admit that when I first began implemen�ng SEO strategies, I was so fixed on the keywords

and proper forma7ng on websites that I forgot that there was an actual human being that would be using the

search engine(for the record, this was over four years ago when everyone and their mother approached SEO

similarly). However, the buyer journey is one of the most important aspects of SEO because search engines like

Google ul�mately want to help buyers on their journey.

What Is a Buyer Journey?

A buyer journey, simply put, is the path a person or company will take when purchasing a product or service.

This path may some�mes be quite short (e.g. I hopped on Amazon to do all of my holiday shopping in a record

30 minutes), but it can also be quite long (e.g. I spent two months researching the car I leased due to cost and

impact the investment would have on my life). Each ac�on that the customer takes on his or her way to a

purchase is considered an important step in the buyer journey.

The buyer journey is an essen�al part of inbound marke�ng because it can help you iden�fy gaps in your exis�ng

strategy. One company’s buyer journey will be wildly variable to another company’s. Even further, your company

will likely have a different buyer journey for each of your buyer personas. The image below depicts a typical

buyer's journey:


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Iden�fy Buyer Personas

Before you jump into SEO or the buyer’s journey, you should have a clear understanding of your buyer personas.

A buyer persona is, essen�ally, a profile of your ideal prospect. You can learn more about crea�ng buyer

personas in our Ul�mate Guide to Inbound Marke�ng Personas, but here is the basic informa�on that is

important to crea�ng a buyer persona:

Role

Responsibili�es

Type of company they work for

Goals

Pain points

Common objec�ons

Iden�fiers (e.g. risk taker)

Once you’ve developed 3-5 buyer personas, you can begin to iden�fy how well exis�ng content fits the buyer

persona, map it to the buyer journey, and then u�lize this informa�on to build your SEO strategy.


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Once you’ve developed 3-5 buyer personas, you can begin to iden�fy how well exis�ng content fits the buyer

persona, map it to the buyer journey, and then u�lize this informa�on to build your SEO strategy.

Map Content to the Buyer Journey

Considering SEO is used to help people find your content, aligning your SEO strategy and buyer journey starts by

first mapping your content to the buyer journey. To do this, you’ll take each piece of content you have and

iden�fy the stage and buyer persona this content applies to (Content may overlap for some buyer personas).

Because this exercise is to help align the journey with SEO, you should also do this with website product and

service pages and also with your blogs because we’ll want to be sure later on that we’ve got search queries for

all your content even if it isn’t a gated offer. If you have a significant amount of blogs, map by grouping topics.

Below is an example of how this mapping should look (You can actually download some of the examples of offers

in the SmartBug Resource Center).

Once you have compiled a list of your content and mapped to the appropriate stage, you can complete further

analysis to iden�fy the content that you are missing for each step of the buyer’s journey. For now, let’s transi�on

towards SEO.

Create Categories and Topics of Current & Future Content

During the buyer persona exercise, you should have iden�fied some buzzwords, problems, goals and terminology

used by each buyer persona. Use this informa�on to compile a list of topics or categories that will then be used

to form the basis of your keyword strategy. For example:


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During the buyer persona exercise, you should have iden�fied some buzzwords, problems, goals and terminology

used by each buyer persona. Use this informa�on to compile a list of topics or categories that will then be used

to form the basis of your keyword strategy. For example:

Lead genera�on

Web design

SEO

From here, you can begin to drill further to ul�mately iden�fy target keywords.

Iden�fy Keyword Possibili�es

Now that you’ve iden�fied the 5-10 different categories of topics, which are really the categories of your

keyword strategy, you can move on to iden�fying the keywords for your content. To do this, take each step

below:

Start by iden�fying your exis�ng ranked keywords using a tool like HubSpot1.

Explore new keyword opportuni�es(Click here to learn more about good keyword opportuni�es) using the

following:

2.

Start with a general approach by checking your categories/topics

Discover long-tail opportuni�es by combining each stage’s query words with the topic(e.g. [query type =

improve] + [topic = lead genera�on] = improve lead genera�on)

Map each possible keyword target to a stage in the funnel. Some keywords may not apply to every one of your

buyer persona’s journeys and some may work for more than one. Below is an example of what this may look like.


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When Are Keywords Most Important in the Buyer’s Journey?

Although a buyer may search for a product or service during the considera�on and decision stages, most of

search occurs during the Awareness stage when the buyer is first learning about the problem and opportunity.

Thus, when doing keyword research, you are likely to see more monthly searches for keywords that fall into the

Awareness stage.

In addi�on, there is a significantly less search volume for keywords that may fall into the Decision stage. In some

industries and for some buyer journeys, the buyer may not search at all during the Decision stage.

For these reasons, you should consider the following �ps:

Start by researching keywords in the Considera�on and Decision stage. Low monthly search volume may

mean that search isn’t used by your buyer in these stages.

Concentrate more target keywords in the Awareness stage. This essen�ally widens your funnel of prospects

by helping people find you before they’ve discovered the best way to solve their problem.

Where Should Keywords be Implemented?

A!er you’ve iden�fied 20-30 target keywords that are op�mized for you buyer’s journey and personas, you’ll

have the task of implemen�ng on your website. The intent behind the keyword or, in other words, the stage in

the funnel largely dictates where keywords should be placed. There are logical steps you should take in

implemen�ng, but first let’s go over the important elements of on-page SEO. Here are all the basic elements you


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the funnel largely dictates where keywords should be placed. There are logical steps you should take in

implemen�ng, but first let’s go over the important elements of on-page SEO. Here are all the basic elements you

should be sure to add a target keywords to:

H1 tag or headline

Page �tle

Throughout the copy of the page

Image alt text

To learn more about op�mizing website pages for SEO, download this guide.

Next, you should follow these logical steps in implemen�ng keywords (a SEO worksheet will be valuable at this

point):

Product/Service pages: Start by iden�fying target keywords from your list of keywords that fit best for your

core service and product website pages. These are typically the keywords found in the Decision stage.

1.

Persona-based pages: You’ve already broken your keywords up by persona. If you have website pages that

are tailored to a persona, op�mize that page for the keywords that are only relevant to that page and

persona.

2.

Content Offers: If you’ve already got landing pages for content offers, be sure that they are op�mized

around one of your target keywords. Once you’ve finished op�mizing exis�ng content offers, iden�fy areas

where you need to develop content for a keyword and stage of the funnel that is lacking.

3.

Blogs: Your blog posts can contain keywords from each stage of the funnel and for each persona, which is

why they are so helpful in growing search engine traffic. Start by op�mizing exis�ng blogs for SEO and then

ensure blogs you create in the future adhere to those guidelines.

4.

Cau�on, One-Size Doesn’t Fit All

As outlined, iden�fying buyer personas, mapping content, and then developing keywords is important because

you have to have a thorough understanding of who will be doing the searching and when they will be doing the

searching before implemen�ng SEO. U�lize the advice in this ar�cle, but, by all means, take cau�on by

considering what works best your buyer’s journey.


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searching before implemen�ng SEO. U�lize the advice in this ar�cle, but, by all means, take cau�on by

considering what works best your buyer’s journey.

If you would like help developing your buyer’s journey and the content that sa�sfies the buyer’s needs at each

stage,contact SmartBug Media today for a consulta�on.


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How to Align Your SEO Strategy & Buyer Journey — Www.smartbugmedia