SEO or Search Engine Optimization, is a critical piece to any business trying to make themselves stand out online. By harnessing the power of Google, you will be able to get your business seen and build authority – without having to pay for ads!
Many people jump in and start working on their SEO without taking into consideration one of the very first things they should do before they start working on it – determining their ideal client. In this blog post, we will talk about why determining your ideal client is critical to the success of your SEO strategy.
Jump to a specific section:
What is an Ideal Client Profile?
What Happens If You Don’t Determine Your Ideal Client Profile?
How Can Identifying Your Ideal Client Profile Unlock Your SEO Reach?
How To Define Your Ideal Client Profile For SEO
How To Put Your Ideal Client Profile In The Center Of Your SEO Strategy
What is an Ideal Client Profile?
An Ideal Client Profile or Ideal Client Persona is a list of attributes of a specific type of person that you have identified as someone you would like to serve in your business.
What Happens If You Don't Determine Your Ideal Client Profile?
SEO is all about getting traffic to your website. Some people might argue that any website traffic is good traffic. However, SEO costs a lot of time and effort and we want to ensure that the traffic we are bringing in is qualified. After all, if we have hundreds of people visiting our website each month, but aren’t getting a single lead from it, is the traffic we are bringing in worth it?
Without taking the time to really narrow down the type of person you want to target, you will often end up with generic content, irrelevant keywords, and wasted resources. SEO aims to keep prospective clients on your website with good, relatable content that solves their pain points and helps move them from onlooker to customer.
How Can Identifying Your Ideal Client Profile Unlock Your SEO Reach?
Once you know who your ideal client is, you can do more targeted research on what that specific person might be searching online. Content creation that directly addresses the needs of the person you are hoping to serve will always preform better than content that hasn’t been properly researched. As an example, your recipe for Banana bread might be bringing in a ton of traffic to your website, but if your ideal client doesn’t care about Banana bread or if the people who are coming to look at your banana bread recipe don’t care about the other content on your website, the traffic you are bringing in won’t convert.
However, if you are looking to photograph or plan someone’s wedding, perhaps a blog on how to plan a wedding timeline might be more appropriate and bring in more qualified leads.
How To Define Your Ideal Client Profile For SEO
Defining your ideal client for SEO can seem daunting. The biggest hesitation that I see with people not wanting to define their ideal client is that they don’t want to limit themselves to one type of person. In order for us to get the best conversion rate when first starting out, we need to more narrowly focus our efforts.
You will want to take some time to think about the following questions:
1.) Who have you worked with in the past that you’ve loved working with?
2.) What are their demographics? (age, location, profession)
3.) What are their goals?
4.) What are their biggest pain points to reach that goal?
5.) Where are they already hanging out online?
6.) What might they be searching for related to your product/service?
The more detailed you can get and the more information you can gather, the easier your job will be of creating a website and content that converts and allows your website visitors to become clients.
How To Put Your Ideal Client Profile In The Center Of Your SEO Strategy
Once you have determined your ideal client, the possibilities are endless in terms of what you can offer to them. You will want to ensure your website is optimized to speak specifically to them. Ensure your copy and structure are serving them and their specific needs. This means that you will want to focus your keyword research on topics and search terms that they might use. Create content that answers their specific questions, and solves their specific pain points.
Not sure where to start? During your time defining who your ideal client is, you should have noted what content they already are consuming and where they are hanging out.
1.) Go to the Facebook groups they are in or other online communities they are a part of
2.) See what questions they are asking.
3.) Do keyword research to determine what keywords you should target to answer that question.
4.) Write your piece of content answering that question or solving that painpoint.
In Conclusion
Defining your ideal client profile first can make or break your SEO strategy. If we are creating content and building out a website SEO strategy, we should do everything in our power to ensure that the people that are visiting our website are qualified to work with us, will resonate with our overall message, and will convert to become clients.
