How to Accurately Identify Your Target Audience for SEO

Keywords always take the limelight when talking about online content. It is true that these words are of extreme importance but they are not everything you need to worry about. In fact, the subject that is deemed more important is your audience.

If you don’t know who is reading your content then you are missing the chance to speak to those who have the potential to avail of your services or buy your products. So why should you get to know your audience?

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   Finding keywords depends on how you know your audience

When you don’t place the correct keywords on your website then you will not be able to reach your audience. However, for you to use the right keywords, you will need to get to know your audience first. Writing content that targets everyone will target no one.

2. Audience engagement is valuable

SEO traffic is helpful as long as the traffic coming in cares about your message and converts into sales. Traffic is only as good as the engagement of that traffic. Therefore, even if you get high traffic on your website, if these people are not engaging with you then they are not helping the business. What you need are people who do not just visit but also engage with your website.

3. The audience are loyal

Keyword traffic arrives on websites because Google showed them the way. Targeted audiences stay on the site and feel that they have a relationship with your brand. They are the kind of people who will engage and are likely to make a purchase.

4. The audience makes the purchase

Loyal customers spread your message and make the purchase. Brands are encouraged to establish a good relationship with their customers because customer retention saves and generates the money.

So how do you identify your audience?

The first thing that an Ontario SEO service provider should do for your website is to identify who your audience is. They are the people you will be talking to about your industry and brand. Here are effective approaches to help you identify your audience:

Understand the demographics of your current customer

To understand who you are targeting with your SEO strategy, you need to start with the current customers you have. Pull together your sales team and get the profile of customers who are buying the products or availing of the services you are offering. Let your sales team take charge of providing your SEO team with the demographics through their insights.

Identify your selling points

What is one thing that sets your business apart from the rest? Why should customers come to you for the products or services that you offer? Identify the selling points of your business. The uniqueness of your brand helps you understand what types of people are picking you over all other businesses in the same niche.

Ask the opinion of outsiders

Analyzing your own company and the audience requires another set of eyes. The tendency of getting too immersed with your internal jargon and processes leave you with little chance to step back and view your business from an outsider’s point of view.

Enlist the help of outsiders preferably by a random sample to gain a better view of your company, service, and practice. The way they see your business can help you improve and gain their trust.

Use social insights

Your social media platforms don’t just help you communicate to the audience, it can also give you a better grip of who is following you. The real connection and interaction that you have with followers provide you with better information on who you are talking to in every platform you are in.

Analyze the SERPs

The search engine returned pages (SERPs) can help you determine the audience that you should be targeting. Run a search using your main keywords and see how these are ranking. Note down if these are transactional or informational content so you can deduce the search intent of visitors.

Search intent defines the reason why a person was directed to your website. Some people come to a site to browse products they want to buy or are considering buying. Others visit websites because they are looking for people who can come to them and deliver a service they need. Still, there are those who want to enrich their knowledge on topics they find interesting and consume content from websites in this niche. The SERP can reveal which of these people are coming to your site.

Take a look over your shoulder 

The more that you know the kind of game your competitors are paying, the greater the chances that you will gain a wider audience and generate more sales than them. Pay attention to the ranking keywords, top pages, and competitors that you have. Use this knowledge of their characteristics to build a brand that can speak better to the audience.

Conduct a survey of your current customers

If you want to target your audience with your content, you need to target them and there are no better people to ask than your previous customers. Conduct a survey or arrange for interviews to shine a light on the characteristics of your audience that not all tools can tell you.

You can use free or paid tools to gather and tally the responses of your customers. After getting a sufficient number of completed surveys, you can determine the kind of people who drop by.

Identify the questions being asked about your core topics

Questions are a powerful way to find out more about the audience and the topics that they care about. Use tools that can define the audience using insights that you can use to formulate search engine optimization (SEO) strategies.

Your audience plays a huge role in generating sales and revenues for your business. A reputable Toronto SEO company will help you put a face to the data. With their help, you also target the audience by using the keywords, language, and content that stir their interest most.