Always pay attention to the people that matter

Ian says: “Stop chasing Google rankings and focus on the people that matter.

The people that matter are the folks whose pains you’re trying to solve with your product, service or whatever you’re creating content for online. Whether you’re a bigger company or you have a niche that you’re a part of, you’re going to have somebody who’s looking for your product. You can’t create content for just anybody and hope that it’ll stick.

You need to make it more personalised and find the right people at the right time for the product that you’re selling or serving.”

How do you find the right people that you should be creating content for, and how do you define the pain your content should be addressing?

“Assuming that you have a product or a service that offers a solution to something that somebody needs in their life, that’s essentially the pain that you’re going to be answering.

To use a classic example, if you’re selling nails, you’re not selling small pieces of metal; you’re selling the fact that the nail can be used to hang a picture and make a home a more personal, happy place to be in. The pain isn’t that they’re looking for something to stick into their wall, it’s that they need something to hang their pictures from so they can create a home for their family, display their experiences, etc.

That’s essentially the way that you can think about the pain. Put yourself in the shoes of the person who’s going to use your product or service and think about what they’re ultimately trying to use it for, rather than what you want them to use it for. Do people use your product in the way that you want them to or are they using it in a different way? That’s something you can uncover during focus groups, on social media, or by looking at product reviews online.”

How do you decide which piece of content goes where on the buyer journey?

“I usually think about it as the traditional sales funnel. First, you identify what people are searching for at the top level. Put yourself in their shoes and consider how they are starting to explore. They may be thinking, ‘I need a picture. How do I hang it up?’ They could be going to a photographer and looking at getting portraits of their family. Then, what questions might they be asking when they’re in the consideration phase? They might be deciding between nails, screws, drywall screws, etc.

In the awareness phase, you try and think about the questions that people are asking. Where would they be looking for these answers? Who are they talking to? What types of content format are they looking for and how would you want to present that? Is it a video, a picture, a piece of text-based content, or a combination of both? Is it on social media, on your website, or Google?

Think about that throughout all the steps of the buyer journey. You need to start with how they even discover that nails exist. Then you go into how they find the best brand of nails. After that, you think about how they decide that your brand or product is exactly the one that they’re ultimately going to want to purchase. Those three steps also have the caveats of what questions they are asking, who they are going to (online or offline), and then how they are getting to that decision in the end.”

How do you ensure that your audience is the right size?

“I’m a fan of the statement ‘niches make riches’. Not everyone is going to need your product and service. Some people might want to know about it or need to know about it in the future but, if you aim too big too quickly, you’re going to be up against giant companies and people who are already well-established.

If you’re not already one of them, it’s important to go down a couple of levels. You need to cover the basics and the bases to establish that you have expertise and authority in different topical areas. The deeper down you can go – by looking at longer tail keywords, product reviews, forums, or other places where people are communicating about products and services – you can start to identify where you fit in the bigger picture of people who are considering what you have to offer.

That could be by gender, age, socioeconomic status, or whatever else is relevant. There are different ways that your product might fit in and that is where you can start to position the content that you’re creating, how you’re formatting it, what form it takes, and how you’re amplifying it across your platforms.”

Do you start by identifying an audience, then wireframe the content, and then look for keywords after that?

“I work in the LGBTQ+ space and, at the end of the day, not all keywords are inherently LGBTQ+-related. However, when we’re looking at a keyword like ‘holiday gifts for men’ (whatever that means, in this day and age), we’re going to position our content specifically toward gay and trans men, or non-binary people who may relate to masculine energies or tendencies. We’re not going to be as broad or stereotypical as another site or brand, but we’re still targeting that keyword, just through our unique lens and point of view.

The more personal that you can be with your content, and the more targeted you can be with the audience, the easier it will be to create better, more authentic, and stronger connections. You will be able to establish longer relationships and get your audience to value you the same way that you’re expressing that you value them. Demonstrate that you recognise your audience in the way that you’re talking and writing about them and the product/service you have to offer, in relation to them and their needs.”

Should you optimize the keyword phrase for your niche and incorporate that within other elements on the page or should you optimize for the generic term and showcase your niche on the landing page?

“It’s a delicate balance and it depends on the topic. If the keyword doesn’t already include an LGBTQ+-related term, we often try to include some sort of modifier. That might be in the title or the meta description when it shows up in Google search, to allude to the fact that the content that we’re creating is for LGBTQ+ people. At the same time, it’s not always inherently necessary.

I had a conversation with a former client of mine who was in the financial services industry. We were writing some content about how to build savings and invest your money. There’s no keyword for, ‘How do I invest my gay money?’ People don’t search for that, specifically. You just want to know how to invest your money. It’s important to make sure that, when you’re covering a topic, you’re being broadly applicable and answering the general question. Then, anybody who might land on your site can still get a potential answer, and Google will recognise it as valid and worth being on the top of the search pages with everything else that’s already there.

For the sake of their product and service, however, we transitioned within the content. We started with the general consensus around how to save or invest your money and then said, ‘As an LGBTQ+ individual, you’re probably looking for businesses, brands, or services that support LGBTQ+ people or are owned and operated by LGBTQ+ people.’

We can also get a little deeper into that conversation within the content, to insert that perspective and make that content more unique, relevant, and authentic to the audience we’re looking for, while still answering the broader search intent and need that Google is looking for. It’s a very delicate balance, but it’s something that’s achievable and that I’ve had success with.”

How do you measure the SEO value of creating a great customer experience?

“Oftentimes, search is a more top-of-funnel or mid-funnel area of opportunity, unless you’re looking at things like specific brand keywords. It can be really difficult to attribute the fact that somebody had a really awesome first touch on your site through a piece of content that they found through search.

However, we can look at how many email newsletters folks signed up for so that they could learn more or keep in touch with us. If it’s a low-barrier-to-entry product, they might buy right away. In most cases, though, it’s looking at things like whether they went on to an additional page that you internally link to. These are softer, less tangible metrics. They’re measurable, but they’re not necessarily something that will wow a CEO. If the user didn’t buy, you can still point to the fact that they found value and will, in theory, be more likely to return or remember you in the future.”

Is it possible to create a wonderful customer experience from content that has been created using AI?

“I think so, yes. I’ve been testing some AI-assisted content. It’s never 100% AI-generated, but I have been leveraging AI to outline content and even fill in certain gaps that are just general knowledge. If there’s general knowledge about something, that’s a great place for AI to colour in the lines so that you can spend the majority of your time on the things that matter more. That could be personalisation or, in the journalism world, conducting interviews associated with the general topic that you’re writing about.

You can spend less time writing the bones of the article, let AI handle that, and then bring in a great expert opinion, an awesome social media embed, or a YouTube video. You can spend that time finding and creating those things instead of having to rewrite the fact that water is wet for the 100 billionth time. A million sites have already said that, and AI is very well-trained and aware of most of those types of things.”

If an SEO is struggling for time, what should they stop doing right now so they can spend more time doing what you suggest in 2024?

“If you’re writing basic content and trying to create a nice content ecosystem, work smarter, not harder. Use AI to your advantage to help create the basis of what you’re doing, and then spend the time improving upon it or enhancing it with your own perspective, your unique values, etc.

Spend that time creating a video or social media assets to go along with the content. Think about ways that you can automate and improve your processes, leveraging the tools that we have. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to leverage AI; it actually creates lots of efficiencies.”

Ian Helms is Director of Growth Marketing at Q.Digital, and you can find them over at Q.Digital.