Search engine optimization (SEO) helps you gain online visibility so the search engines — and the people using them to search for information — can understand your company and what kinds of products and services you have to offer. Of course, that’s only part of the game when it comes to digital marketing. SEO doesn’t exist in a bubble. While it can drive people to your website, that traffic isn’t necessarily earning you any money unless you can convince those visitors to make a purchase.
Suppose you want to build a successful SEO strategy that pulls in revenue. In that case, you’ll want to align your efforts with the three stages of the marketing funnel: awareness, consideration, and decision-making.
In this article, we will focus solely on the awareness stage. Let’s get started!
Upper Funnel vs. Lower Funnel Marketing
As you seek to market to the awareness, consideration, and conversion stages of a buyer’s journey, you need to pay attention to conversion funnel SEO. Your SEO keyword strategy should specifically focus on the people you’re trying to attract and where they’re at in the awareness, consideration, and decision funnel.
In short, high funnel marketing targets the people looking to become aware of the solutions you can offer them. On the other hand, low funnel marketing targets people who are ready to become your clients or customers.
What is the Awareness Stage?
Awareness — also known as top of funnel or TOF — is the first stop along a buyer’s journey. It has the broadest demographic because this is where potential customers are when they don’t exactly know what product or service they need (if they even need anything at all). They’ve identified that they have a problem, but they don’t know what to do to solve that issue.
When it comes to target funnels, many companies fall flat in terms of thinking about users’ intentions. Many marketers will create content that speaks to keyword phrases unrelated to the buyer’s journey and SEO. The problem here is that a lot of times, searchers who are in the awareness stage aren’t using the keyword terms that are being put into content because they’re just trying to learn how to solve their problem while marketers are trying to sell them on products they’re not quite ready for. It’s a mismatch in communication. Content that doesn’t seek to genuinely answer the questions being asked by consumers in the awareness stage can ultimately make your company seem less trustworthy to potential customers. This, in turn, can hurt your rankings with the search engines.
The problem is that users searching for that phrase aren’t ready to buy anything; they’re still in the awareness stage and just want to learn about their problem, and marketers are often selling them a keyword. Companies want customers to learn about the benefits of their products before they actually answer searchers’ questions when they’re in the awareness stage.
As a marketer, if you map your SEO strategy to the marketing funnel, you’ll be able to create content that drives traffic and boosts your SERP rankings to earn more conversions.
Marketing to the Stages of Awareness
Just as the buyer’s journey has stages, so does the awareness stage itself. SEO for the awareness stage should talk to people who are going through the following steps of awareness:
- Unaware
- Pain aware or problem aware
- Solution aware
- Production aware
- Most aware
That sounds great on paper, right? But what exactly do you do with this information? In terms of marketing stages, awareness offers you the opportunity to grab the attention of people who might not even realize they need you yet. To market to them:
Perform Keyword Research
The initial step in most SEO strategies is to perform keyword research. During this phase, you need to consider what your ideal customers are looking for online. Put yourself in their shoes and think about what you’d be searching for if you were in the awareness phase.
During this stage, you should be all about helping potential customers understand their problems. Your keywords should include phrases such as:
- Prevent
- Improve
- Troubleshoot
- How to
- Resolve
These keywords appeal to a very wide demographic and help you get optimal visibility online.
Create Your Content
Once your keywords have been mapped to your SEO funnel strategy, you’re ready to create your content. Remember that keywords aren’t the only elements that need to be aligned with your buyers’ journeys; the types of content you publish also matter.
For the awareness stage, focus on types of content that help people learn more about how you can solve their problems. These formats usually include:
- Educational blog posts
- Analyst reports
- Industry research
- Research reports
- eBooks
- Editorial content
- Expert content
- Whitepapers
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Zero Gravity Marketing is here to partner with you to make sure your content targets the right people in the right places. Connect with us to learn how we can help you today!
