7 Techniques for Researching and Analyzing Your Audience for SEO

To what extent can you increase conversions and the quality of visitors to your website? Improve your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts by learning how to delve deeply into your target demographic.

When asked to define SEO, I usually say that it combines marketing and technology elements with psychology’s insights.

From a marketing standpoint, you need to know your product, the pain points it alleviates, and how to talk to those people.

Technically speaking, you’ll need to be able to provide a groundwork for your site that boosts its visibility in search results.

Here is when an SEO’s psychological insights come into play.

Your efforts in search engine optimization (SEO) will bear fruit if, in addition to identifying your ideal website visitor, you also discover who they are and what inspires them.

You’ll be able to back up your efforts with complex data like visitor volume and return on investment.
Search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t just about the stats (i.e., keyword ranking positions, number of backlinks, traffic, etc.). Additionally, a successful SEO strategy relies on knowing who you’re writing for and tailoring your content accordingly.

More conversions result from targeted traffic brought in when SEO efforts focus on the proper demographic.

Search engine optimization (SEO) research and analysis may be accomplished in several ways.
The following list demonstrates how many methods include supplementary resources to facilitate implementation.

1. Collect Demographic Information Through Keywords

Search engine optimization (SEO) relies heavily on keyword research. You probably already know that keywords should be specific to your goods or services.

To learn more about the people most likely to be interested in your brand, narrow your keyword selection down to the top five terms that best describe it.

To help you understand how a specific term or topic has evolved over time and about a given demographic, Google Trends may be consulted.

Amid the pandemic’s rapid change in internet activity, Google Trends proved to be an invaluable resource.

Because one of my companies is in the business of publishing recipes, the topic of what kinds of dishes people look for while they’re trapped at home arose.

Banana bread was what we had.

When we were stuck indoors due to bad weather, savory comfort foods seemed to take center stage. Below is a screenshot showing how “banana bread” popularity increased dramatically.
But what about the demographic statistics?

Although Google Trends is an excellent resource for this information, I also find that Demographics.io is a valuable complement. This instrument connects demographic information with search terms.
Here’s what people were looking for when they typed “banana bread” into a search engine.

Tip: How to Use This Information

There are several ways in which knowing a user’s age, gender, and geographic region may improve search engine optimization.
The best places to find local connection possibilities are in the areas where your target audience lives and does their research.
Topics, hobbies, and other languages appropriate for different age and gender groups may be identified.

2. Find Out Who Is Seeing Your Website

You may compare this tactic to drawing a target around your arrow.
But knowing who is visiting your site can help you assess whether or not they are the right people to be there.
Google Analytics is a convenient tool for gathering such data.
Age, gender, geography, and interest are just a few of the demographics that may be found in the Audience area.

Tip: How to Use This Information

This information might help you tailor your content to your audience and choose where to focus your marketing efforts.
On the other side, after reviewing this data, you may conclude that it is irrelevant to your organization’s intended audience.
If that’s the case, you should double-check the relevance of your keywords inside the body of your text to ensure there is no inconsistency.

3. Evaluate Rival Brands

If you want to learn more about your potential customers, you don’t need to limit yourself to only your website.
You would want to find out about the demographics and psychographics of your target audience. The following resources help conduct such an investigation.

Quantcast

Quantcast compiles consumer preferences and spending habits and information on consumer profession, technology preferences, demographics, and interest in specific topics. Goodreads.com is the subject of the analysis that follows.

Audience

Take it from me; I like this instrument and often use it.

Audiense.com claims its audience is constructed based on eight factors: demographics, relationships, behavior (activity), Conversations, IBM Watson personality insights, geography, interests, and a user’s Twitter profile.

The next step is for Audiense to establish audience segments by “clustering people based on who knows who,” or in other words, how these individuals are related. If A follows B, A and B will be placed in the same cluster.

As can be seen in the screenshot below, the report’s first screen includes a summary of the collected audience data.

This resource’s primary strength is the ability to narrow your focus even more. You may get a summary of the data by looking at the provided breakdown.

Tip: How to Use This Information

Similar to the previous technique, this information may provide light on the target demographic and guide suggestions for content and geographic focus.

The links you locate might be very relevant to your niche.

4. Make use of social data

Social media networks are invaluable for getting data on a target market quickly.
The information shown below pertains specifically to your company’s Facebook page and how you may examine follower/fan data:

Followerwonk also allows you to spy on the audience data of your rivals and other companies.
The word cloud it generates for you reveals the most popular terms being discussed by people.

Tip: How to Use This Information

More specifically, the word cloud in Followerwonk may suggest content marketing ideas and assist you in finding additional keywords you may have overlooked.

5. Conduct Surveys

The simplicity of this approach sets it out as the best option. Consider conducting a poll to learn more about your target demographic.

You’ll receive more responses if you limit the survey to a reasonable length. Inquire about things like demographics, general interests, problems, and requirements.

How To Create & Use Surveys For Content Marketing is an excellent guide for designing and implementing a survey.

Tip: How to Use This Information

Use the survey data to uncover fresh ideas for articles, videos, keywords, and other forms of content.

6. Identify Questions

Because Google is including more and more in-text responses into search engine results pages (SERPs), it is crucial to determine the most frequently asked queries by users.
To further increase our chances of being seen by our target demographic, we need to think forward to their long-tail search queries. Numerous resources are available to answer frequent inquiries, such as:

AlsoAsked.
AnswerThePublic.
BuzzSumo.
Semrush.

It’s a good idea to try out as many of these programs as possible since they all use different data combinations. Here is an actual question and answer from AnswerThePublic.com.

Tip: How to Use This Information

You may boost your chances of being a direct response in Google SERPs by creating content around frequently asked issues and attracting long-tail searches among your audience.

7. Secondary Research Data

If you know the average age and interests of your target demographic, you may fill in the remainder using secondary sources. Find research that focuses on one specific facet of your target demographic.

If you think your target demographic includes Baby Boomers, you may use Google Scholar to find studies done specifically on this cohort.

Tip: How to Use This Information

You may use this new information to refine your character sketches and SEO strategy.

Last Words

Exploring your target demographic before beginning SEO-related duties may seem like much additional effort. On the other hand, the payoff is substantial.

The results of your SEO efforts will increase due to the increased traffic to your site.

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