Have conversations and listen to your customers before turning to SEO research

Martin says: “Listen to your customers first and then validate it with SEO research.”

There are a lot of ways to listen to your customers, and it obviously depends on your business. A SaaS company might have to dig through their customer support tickets or run regular workshops, webinars, or Q&As to get to the bottom of what their clients, customers, and potential customers are truly having problems with.

It should help dictate what activities you do as an SEO. We’re often too reliant on keyword research tools and data rather than just picking up the phone and speaking to our clients, customers, and the people who are interested in the overall topic. It’s a huge mistake that a lot of SEOs fall into – which is understandable because who wants another Zoom call? Who wants to pick up a phone?

However, when you’re more ingrained in the conversations that are happening with your customers, you’re able to create better content and have a bigger impact. You’ll be creating important content that gets to the nooks and crannies of the problems they’re facing in their day-to-day. SEO tools won’t always give you all the information.”

What kinds of questions should SEOs be asking their customers?

“You don’t need to track the customer journey in terms of clicks, visits, where they found you, or even what keyword they typed in. You can find a lot of that information using tools. Instead, you want to understand what their goals are.

When someone buys some software or wants to work with a company, what’s the problem they want to solve? What’s keeping them up at night? What is it about the product or service you have that can solve that problem? The missing piece of the puzzle is how you can communicate that.

If someone is trying to rank their business on the first page of Google, what do they want from that? Do they want more revenue, more customers, or to increase the value of each customer? When you get to those kinds of questions and understand their goals, then you can say, ‘Here’s why SEO is going to help you achieve that goal, and this is the kind of content we need to create.’

Then, on the back end, you want to use SEO tools to validate that people actually search for that. They might say one thing on a call or in an email, but what they type into search might be different. Take the ideas from the client and then use SEO tools to do the research, validate it, and make a plan.

On the SEO side, the tools will give you the information you need. However, without the initial insight from that client or potential client, how are you going to reach them and how do you know that content is going to help them achieve their goal?

You want to help people, not just rank on the first page of Google. They don’t care about rankings, ultimately. Rankings are just an indication of the work that you’ve done. What they want is for you to solve their problems, and SEO is a way to get there, but you need to understand the goals originally.”

Do you need to have direct conversations, or can a form/questionnaire be as effective?

“Recently, we launched a survey about how the mental health of entrepreneurs and business owners is affected by dealing with clients. We used what we call a ‘gifted survey’. We sent it in an email and said, ‘If you fill out this survey, you’ll get a free copy of our book, and you’ll be entered into a prize draw.’ That can work remarkably well. We had an 83% conversion rate, and you can ask really specific questions.

You can do this in any niche in any industry. Then, if you want to create a piece of original research (which is great for SEO), you can do that on the back end as well. Collect data from your ideal clients by giving them a gift in exchange for some insights. Then, on the back end, produce that original research, get links to it, and share it. The PR-friendly nature of that is so much better than traditional content.

You could also do regular workshops. Email your potential clients and ask if they want to join a free 30-minute Q&A. You can say, ‘What problems are you facing right now? I’d love to understand your position and answer your questions.’ Then, you can go away and create loads of content based on those questions.

Sometimes, as SEOs, we rely too much on tech when we’re struggling with content ideas or what to rank for. Why not do it the old-school way and have some real conversations? The content will come flooding back to you.

We used to run a content marketing challenge where we would review people’s content from an SEO point of view. Everyone who submitted blog content would say, ‘Your headings/subheadings need to switch to this, you’ve got images here, the structure of this is a bit strange, etc.’ After that call, we would have a flood of content ideas, new keywords, and new topics that we could talk about to rank for those keywords. We know that people who need support are searching for these things because they’ve just told us.

The energy you get from a real conversation is completely different from using tools. There are so many keyword research tools that I can’t even reel them off now. I try to avoid them until I start crafting that content and targeting specific keywords.

Learn what your audience wants first, and what they need help with, even if they’re not aware of it. You can uncover so many hidden content ideas based on one single conversation. What they say and what they don’t say will allow you to create a series of articles to help more people.”

How do you identify which people to talk to first?

“If you have a community element to your product or service, then start there. One of our clients has a Facebook group. When a customer joins and buys some software, they get added to a Facebook group where they will be asking beginner questions. That’s great.

If you’ve got a business, there’s probably a Facebook group out there with boatloads of questions about your topic. If you don’t have an email list or a community, but you want to create helpful content, go and join some Facebook groups, communities, or forums that talk about those things. The same basic questions will come up all the time. That’s valuable information that you can answer. You might not want to answer it there for one person, but you definitely want to answer it for the 1,000 people who come to your website through search results.

There are so many avenues. You’ve got customer support tickets, your own Facebook groups, topical Facebook groups, or even Facebook groups for SEO tools. There are a ton of SEO Facebook groups you could join to learn the beginner questions that people are asking.

Use those to your advantage and try to craft a website that is the best resource on that topic. Craft the best version of that resource that’s transparent, open, and honest. Answer those questions as if you are the Google of your industry, and you can only really do that by listening to your clients.”

How do you validate your customer research with keyword research?

“Once you’ve got the questions, throw them in a Google Doc to see what it would look like. If you had to think of 5-10 bullet points to answer this question or the considerations that it brought up, what would you put? Then, use keyword research tools to make sure that people are searching for those things. Collect lots of other keywords that people are typing in too, even if you don’t use them.

For each article we create, it’s pretty common for us to collect 30-50 keywords. They might not have the greatest search volume so you may need to consider that if people search for X, they might be searching for Y. Use tools like Majestic and SEMrush to find different channels. Keep clicking and see where the keywords lead you. Look at the competition and what they’ve tried to target for the same question. That’s vital.

You won’t struggle to find research to back it up. It’ll take you 10 seconds to verify that people search for this and lots of people are concerned about this problem. However, you might not get there without speaking to that person first. Get the conversation started, then do your own research and use your own initiative before you touch a keyword research tool. Then, use the keyword research tool to help you formalise a plan and a structure for that piece of content and create it.

As an agency, we use blogging to try and rank for those keywords. It might be different for you. You might have a static page that you want to drive traffic to through links. You still have to optimize it, and use keyword research tools and data to back that up.”

Do you ever need to start with keyword research to make sure you’re not missing out on opportunities?

“With our clients, it changes partway through the relationship. When we first take on a client, we have a huge call about their business, their goals, and what they think people are struggling with based on the conversations they’ve had. Then, we go over to keyword research tools to verify what they’ve told us and have a look at their audience and their research.

After three months of creating long-form content, we get to understand that business and we will start to rely more on the SEO tools. We start collecting our own content ideas before speaking to the client. We will come up with a series of articles based on what we’ve found out since working with them, using keyword research for every article.

We start by doing a lot of the research verbally and over emails, then in Facebook groups, forums, etc., to really get into the nooks and crannies of that niche. If we were to just ask what keywords they want to rank for, put them into SEO tools, and make that content, we would still pick up rankings. However, for us to really have an impact on this business, we need to understand everything there is to know about their day-to-day, their conversations, and everything that they do. That enables us to plan content much better, and we’re not relying on the client. We take ownership.

Speaking to customers, looking on forums, and using keyword research tools are all methods for finding out what people are searching for. It’s just that keyword research data is more verifiable. Imagine you never considered SEO or keywords, and your only job was to answer every single question that you’ve ever been asked as a business owner – going into depth and giving them clarity through honest transparent content about every question you’ve ever been asked before. Chances are your SEO would be far better than your competitors because Google genuinely wants to provide the best results to their users.

If you only focus on keyword research, you might not get there. If you only focus on what your client is telling you, what people are searching for, and your own research, there’s a good chance that you will get some long-lasting results. There are pros and cons to each, so you need both. However, you can come up with a lot more content ideas when you have real conversations with people and customers. Then, use SEO and research tools on the back end to verify the best direction for that piece of content.”

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?

“Stop checking your rankings. It’s a bit of an addiction for SEOs. Almost every morning I log into my rank tracker and check to see if the graph’s gone up or down.

Checking rankings has zero impact on the client’s rankings. What does have a big impact is putting in the work, creating content, building backlinks, etc. When you check rankings and Google’s had a bit of a shift in the night, that’s going to affect you mentally. It creates a little bit of frustration when you’re just about to hit the ground running for your day.

When I was in sales, I used to check my numbers whenever I wasn’t with a client, instead of finding a new client or a new way to improve a client. Avoid checking your rankings too frequently.”

Martin Huntbach is Co-Founder at Jammy Digital, and you can find him over at JammyDigital.com.