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Creating Buyer Personas Utilizing SEO Data

Written by Peter Devereaux | Feb 4, 2015 6:00:00 AM

By David Meade

To create high-value transactions that result in large profits, companies need to create buyer personas, and that responsibility may fall on SEOs and copywriters. 

In this briefing, we'll cover the main points one can utilize to discover buyer personas, specifically for website success.

First, themes have to be established and in today's world we call those "key search phrases." Due to the competitiveness of the Internet the older two-combination key phrases are not effective. A buyer persona must be defined in three to five words.  

The first variable in a competition equation is how many pages exist within the Google index that relate to the key phrase. The second variable is how many Web pages contain the key phrase in the title. The Title Tag is found in websites and is known as the header tag located in the HTML code. The Title Tag promotes the theme of the Web page. The third variable is how many Web pages contain the key phrase in anchor text. Incoming links are utilized by search engine algorithms to gain an idea of a website's popularity. Anchor text is an important factor in search engine relevance. Anchor text is the visible portion of clickable text on a hyperlink. Key phrases are often added in anchor text.

The criticality of these three numbers cannot be overemphasized. Last November, Google published an international patent that describes providing natural language type answers to queries. Since the majority of searches come from Google, we have to consider them first in a buyer persona strategy.  

Do Not Underestimate Content

Using natural language strategies, an SEO specialist has to determine a large number of key phrases that are applicable to any Web-based business, and then using statistical software has to conduct the following analysis:

- How many pages are indexed with this key phrase?

- In how many pages are the key phrases in title for?

- In how many pages are the key phrases in anchor for?

The results for key phrases (buyer personas) that are manageable and can be chosen and utilized by the website owners have to be within this range:

- Less than 1,000,000 pages indexed

- Less than 1,000 all in title

- Less than 2,000 all in anchor

The next step is to manage these key phrases. Google currently practices Latent Symantic Indexing (LSI). A key feature of this algorithm is that it provides Google the ability to extract the conceptual content of a page by establishing associations between terms that are in similar context.  

SEO strategy to have a website found for key phrases is the measure of success of a buyer persona project. Once the key phrases are discovered (at least 30), the copywriter or website owner just has to choose and write articles and text for the homepage of the business with those key phrases in use. Thirty key phrases will provide the basis for homepage optimization and at least two years of SEO article content, at the rate of one per month.  The standard practice is using the key phrases in meta tags and also in H1 and H2 headers. A 500-600 word article or body of text for each key phrase is sufficient for it to be found by users (buyers) who fit the persona. 

SEO strategies for social proof and Internet marketing find as their basis the preparation of keyword matrix.  Management can review a findings report, which is usually organized by competition (for example High or Medium) and search volume, and decide on their priorities. Normally a couple of the highest-value search terms are chosen for the website, and the rest for topic headings of SEO Articles to be posted as part of a firm's newsletter elsewhere on the site.   

David Meade is an international freelance SEO Consultant based in Florida. He has written half a dozen books and is also a copywriter. He can be reached at: DavidMeade7777@gmail.com or through his website.