Thursday, May 10, 2012

How to Use Customer Personalities to Write Effective SEO Content

In my last post I discussed using personas to create content that targets your potential customer. In that post

I defined the differences between personalities and persons:

Persona = motivation (what the visitor needs, why they are on your site)

Personality = temperament (how they navigate, what they need to see or read to find what they want)

Using both personalities and persons is important when writing great content that is both user- and search-engine friendly.

Use personalities to give your visitors the content the need

Despite what we believe about some people, every person has a personality. That personality determines how searchers seek out website promotion information that interests them. It effects keywords, sites they click on, how they navigate and what their expectations are.

There are four basic personality types, and every person usually has one that is dominant over the others, while maintaining some attributes of them all. Understanding these personality types helps you create a site that provides visitors the information they need to make the best decision for them and for you.
The four personality types:
  • Competitive (aka Choleric or Lion)
  • Spontaneous (aka Phlegmatic or Golden Retriever)
  • Humanistic (aka Sanguine or Otter)
  • Methodical (aka Melancholy or Beaver)

Competitive

Mal is a competitive personality. He wants to see options before making a decision. Not just some of them; all of them. He will often look at every nuance possible to determine which iteration of a particular product or service is the best one. Because of this, Mal can become frustrated when he can’t find the “perfect” option.
Mal is driven and thrives on challenges, sometimes even volunteering when others avoid. Everything is measured in goals and achieving those goals. Leisurely (non-goal oriented) activity is difficult for Mal as he measures his self worth through success. Mal does not like inefficiency and constantly seeks ways to improve things. When looking for a product, the one and only concern is – will it help him achieve his goals. As such, he is also hard to sell to, as he isn’t easily swayed by fluffy marketing language.
Traits:
  • Spontaneous buyers – no time to “shop around”
  • Curiosity driven – try to peak their interest
  • Goal oriented – they are there for a purpose
  • Appreciates honesty – no BS!
  • Loyal customer – earn their business, they’ll be back
  • Hard to sell – forget all the emotional fluff
  • Dislikes inefficiency and disorganization – make your site EASY to use
  • Impatient – tell them and tell them quick!
  • Abandons page and sale easily – if they can’t find it they’re out
To sell to Mal, you must start with being upfront and honest. Creditability is important and you can establish that by saying what most people won’t–point out your own negatives along with your positives. Never make claims that cannot be substantiated and proven true. Do what you can to demonstrate the true value of your product without over-hyping it. Make sure all necessary information is readily available so they don’t have to dig just to find what they need. Use links and calls to action to get them to take the next step in the conversion process.

Spontaneous

Kaylee is a follower of whatever happens to be the latest trends and places a high value on others opinions. For her, it’s not so much about finding the value herself, but seeing what other trusted sources have to say. This gives her assurance she is making the right purchasing decision. She also fears missing out on a good thing, which can cause her to buy based on the excitement factor alone. Immediate gratification is a primary motivation, so great customer service before and after the sale helps provide the comfort and justification needed to help her feel like she made a good decision.
Traits:
  • Follows trends – fads are a good thing
  • Feeds on positive opinion – get testimonials and reviews
  • Opinion-based buying – facts don’t matter so much
  • Sold by word of mouth – social media is key
  • Turned away by negative opinions – good products rule
  • May suffer from buyer’s remorse – after-the-sale reinforcement is needed to get them back
To sell to Kaylee, your site must go beyond the bland corporate mumbo-jumbo. Content must be captivating and speak to her on an emotional level. Kaylee wants a lot of information but will likely skim until she finds what she needs. Be sure to clearly show your unique value proposition and that of your products and/or services. Provided they are good, having ready access to customer reviews and testimonials will be the final push for her purchasing decision.

Humanistic

Zoe wants to see your testimonials, but for a different reason. She is looking for anything that confirms that you are able to meet her needs, and the testimonials will either back that up or send up the red flags. Zoe looks at the bigger picture when making decisions and will often put the needs of others before herself. She wants to choose something that has broad acceptance, fearing any decision that may leave her hung out to dry on a planet full of Reavers. She doesn’t like getting “locked in,” so providing options for cancellation or returns can give her a sense of freedom to change her mind.
Traits:
  • Motivated by security – display guarantees, return and cancellation policies
  • Repeat buyer – once comfortable, they’ll come back
  • Scared of commitment – make buying (and changing mind) easy
  • Needs constant reassurance – hold their hand through the sales process
  • Relies too heavily on others’ opinions – build up positive reviews and testimonials
To reach Zoe, be sure to have ample links to the pages that reinforce your trust, commitment and quality. About us and testimonial pages are frequently visited so make sure yours is robust. Provide reassurances via guarantees, links to policy pages and iterate your site security. Be sure your content maintains a personal tone and often speaks of the bigger picture, as to Zoe, it’s not always about her.

Methodical

Simon Tam will be the most likely to read every word on your page. In fact, he’s likely to read every page on your site. He’s not an impulse buyers but reviews and weighs all the evidence in order to make an informed decision. Dr. Tam is a logical person with an eye for detail. He is likely on your site looking to solve a problem of some kind. Before making a decision, he weighs everything to make sure it is a responsible decision in the end.
Traits:
  • Feature oriented – benefits are not warranted here
  • Does not like fluff – be straight and honest
  • Factual based buyer – back up your claims
  • Engaged in content – more info is good info
  • Skeptical – convincing may be tough
  • Needs specific, detailed information – provide as much as you can
To reach Simon you need to present hard evidence in an organized fashion. He doesn’t care about a personal touch, but rather wants an authoritative voice. Simon likes graphs and tables, specs and any other detailed “proof” you can provide. State your facts with little fluff as that only raises the skeptical hairs on his head. Don’t say anything that sounds too good to be true, because it likely is and Simon will walk away.
Using information about these basic personalities helps SEOs and content writers to structure a website with the most appropriate content available on each page. Used in conjunction with established persons, the site content can be created to meet the specific needs of different individuals with different temperaments, different desires and different goals… but ultimately driving them to the final goal: the sale.
Addressing the right persona with the right temperament in the right place can be tricky. But these considerations are an important part of creating a website that will drive the most conversions possible

Source : http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-use-customer-personalities-to-write-effective-seo-content/43345/

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Unique Content for Search Engine Optimization

Nothing is more important than fresh and unique content. If you have lifeless writing, then the dry and non-engaging content will drive readers away very fast. Also, if readers see a website that has a lot of boring, old, stuffy content, they will probably think it is some old outdated site and leave immediately. Or, they will find it unbearable and you will lose all credibility fast. That is why you want to make sure that your content is great, because search engines love unique and interesting content. It is that that comes up first and procures the most hits as a result.

As times change, peoples’ interests change and your content really needs to reflect that and make sure that it addresses those changing views and interests. Keep your writing new and up to date and this will benefit you and your business, as readers will want to stay on your page and want to even return. If your page has relevant content, it will get a lot more hits, too.
One way you can ensure that your writing is great is to have a team of good writers that can compose great, original, and fresh content for you. If writers are working busily to create this writing, you can focus more on other aspects and you will be able to manage your overall website better. Writers who know how to manage syntax and devices of persuasion can even make the content more convincing and persuasive and get your message out in ways that you could not before.

Keep in mind that your website might be judged based on the content and therefore, if you have any grammatical errors then your credibility might just be shattered to pieces. Your viewer might think it is some kind of spam site or something very unprofessional and you will lose their interest and attention in a heartbeat. People like professionalism and websites that seem to be genuine and high class. This means that the content needs to be free of all spelling and punctuation errors and having a team of good writers can ensure you of that.

Tell your team of writers all that you stand for and all that you wish to convey to the world and once they understand your mission, then you can give allow your ideas to be expressed to the world in just the way that you want it to be. You have a mission and you have something that you want expressed, but saying it in just the right way is extremely important. If you say things in a unique and never before said way, then it will come up faster and will improve your search engine optimization.

You can get your ideas out there and you can improve your business if you have great content that draws people in and keeps their attention. This means that you might have to work hard to keep your content fresh and engaging and to make it a priority to fill your website with the things that people want to know about.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

How to get more traffic to website for Free

Getting traffic to web site is most important thing to show your excellent online seo presence. Traffic the main part and key thing for online internet marketing business success. Getting traffic towards a website is the most important thing for a web master. Most of the web masters pay a lot of bugs to search engines in the form of Adwords and buying the ads place in the websites having high traffic. Here are some of the excellent ways to drive the more and more traffic for free.

1. Optimize your site Search Engine Friendly : As search engines are the main source to drive traffic for free. If you want to get this free traffic you need to invest some of your time in order to make your site search engine friendly. You need to develop the content having the the targeted keywords and make sure they are interlinked to targeted pages.

2. Update content frequently : This is one of the major step to drive organic traffic. As per SEO terms content is the king. Search engines love the sites that are being updated frequently so update the site with rich content. Not only the search engines if the people love the content in your site they will visit your site daily to know what is the new thing in your site so updating the content is one the most important.

3. Bookmark the pages : You need to take the more advantage of book marking sites as these site are frequently updated and more SEO friendly so when ever you bookmark a link in these sites your link will be crawled by the search engines and helps to index you link when ever a user search for a particular keyword which is related to your niche. So bookmark all the link of your web site in all the book marking sites such as Digg, stumbleupon, Mixx, etc…

4. Getting link from other sites which are in your niche : The most important thing to rank high in search engines to get a link from the sites that are having high value in your niche so make sure that you get a link from those sites. Some of the best ways to get link from those sites is by doing guest posts and giving the valuable comments for the posts in those sites. This helps in providing a back link as well as visitors comes to your web site based on you valuable comment.

5. Make use off all the free chances that are available : Free promotion is the best way to brand your self in the industry. There are lot of things available to make your brand popular some of them are Directory submission ,Article submission, Classified submission, Press releases etc.,.

6. Create a free product’s or offer free service : As we know that every human links the word free they first look get attracted by this word so make use of this all the thing you need to do is create a free product and offer them and say the befits of using your product.

7. Offline promotion : We always forget offline promotion  but it helps driving the traffic towards the website. Though many of the people spend a lot of time online than offline but still life hasn’t moved completely on web. Some of the best way of offline promotion is make sure you include your company URL in business card and souvenirs. Stick your company logo on the company vehicles. Distribute the T-shirts among employs and ask them to wear those when they are moving in the market place so that people can recognize you brand easily.