How To Target Your SEO Landing Page’s Demographic Profile

Historically, in the SEM industry, one has mentioned landing pages in conjunction with Paid Advertising and other forms of controlled click traffic. SEO has always been a more nebulous and mysterious practice; and one page, optimized for a few keywords, could show for literally hundreds of different long-tail queries. The plan was to make this […]

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Historically, in the SEM industry, one has mentioned landing pages in conjunction with Paid Advertising and other forms of controlled click traffic. SEO has always been a more nebulous and mysterious practice; and one page, optimized for a few keywords, could show for literally hundreds of different long-tail queries. The plan was to make this page as user-friendly and clear as possible, but have generic enough to appeal to a wide variety of shoppers.

Today, I want to challenge you to take this practice and throw it out the window. The reality is, even with pages you use to gain organic rankings and traffic, segmentation and targeting is always going to produce more results than a generic page, how granular you can get with your segmentation and targeting is another matter.

We all do keyword research as the basis for our organic marketing, whether you’re building a wireframe for your new website, looking for new page ideas, or finding phrases that existing pages can rank for – keyword research is the backbone of your search. Take your keyword research to the next level and consider WHO is searching for that term. There are a few tools that can help.

MSN adCenter Labs Demographics Prediction Tool

I really like this tool,  as it will tell you the dominant demographic age and gender for either keyword phrases or websites. This is valuable information to consider as you chose imagery, text, voice and calls to action for each page. If I’m creating new content for the site, I will plug in my target keyword phrases and list the dominant gender and age groups, keeping that info in mind as I select a “hook” and a voice throughout my page.

Here’s an example of how I’d process the information I put together :

Keyword Phrase Searches Per Day Gender Split Dominant Age Range
Phoenix Dentists 4 56% Female; 44% male 25-34
Dentist Phoenix 2 83% Female; 17% Male 25-34

So from this data, I know that a majority of my shoppers are female, and they’re between the ages of 25 and 34. What do I know about this age group and gender? And how can that help my client increase the phone calls to their site?

  • Women outnumber men on most social networks, so make your page clean and easy to understand, and make it link to your Facebook fan page and show them how to follow you on Twitter.
  • This is a bit of a generalization, but I’m not afraid to use them to get going on a new page. We’re you’re looking at a fairly web-savvy lady who may or may not have insurance. Either way, she’s looking for quality service, recommendations and up-front pricing with no surprises, be sure your page reflects that.
  • Import 3rd party reviews right onto your site, and especially on this page to increase the trust factor once this user lands.
  • Use straightforward language and information in bullet points. Vanessa Fox said at PubCon this year (to paraphrase) the internet is your new 1-800 number, provide ALL of the information your shoppers need at the click of a mouse.
  • I would also try, and then test, an image of a “girl next door” type or some cute kids with great teeth would appeal to your user; and if your user happens to be a guy, a cute girl wouldn’t hurt a thing!

This is a fair amount of information to take into consideration when you build your page, write and design the page based on the majority demographic; but do it well, and you’re going to realize a lower bounce rate, and more click- throughs.

Use your visitors to find what you need

Your website already has the greatest data you could ever need to target your organic pages, if you know how to capture it. There are a few different ways to find this information, the simplest being plugging your URL into the tool above. You can also use data from your analytics program to help you decide who you’re targeting and the best way to do it. There are a few other tools that look promising although I haven’t tried all of them, yet. If you know of something good, share it with everyone in the comments below.

CrowdScience.com – After an easy setup, CrowdScience will “pop up” an easy and “polite” invitation to help with market research to your visitors. This can be a valuable tool, but it can also alienate users so be careful and watch your analytics as you try it.

Pardot.com – I do have some experience with Pardot, and the information it can give you on site visitors is scary, and awesome at the same time. Every day, you will receive a report that tells you who visited your site, their email address, where they are visiting from, how many times they’ve visited your site in the last year, and will even score that lead based on factors you outline in the platform. Scary intelligent!

Quantcast.com – This allows you to measure the demographic information for visitors coming to your website simply by placing a script on your own website. The downside to this tool is everyone can see the data by simply entering your domain at the Quantcast.com website. If the information is worth giving up some privacy, you can use this program to help you obtain a ton of information such as age, gender, children per household, affluence, ethnicity, and college graduate status. That’s a bunch of information you can use to craft pages specifically for your visitors – don’t ignore it.

Test, test, test

I can’t stress this enough, these tactics are a good starting point, but testing and tweaking is the only way you’re going to see increased improvement. No form of marketing is “set it and forget it” so don’t fool yourself into believing this is a one time job; successful marketers try new things, test new ideas and continually, so set up Google Website Optimizer on your organic pages and get to work.

Let’s wrap this monster article up. I just can’t help being verbose – I’m crazy about segmentation and targeting! Here’s a short checklist for what you need to look at when targeting your SEO landing pages to the ideal demographic:

  1. Find demographic information on keywords you want to use on your organic ranking pages.
  2. Use imagery, colors and text designed to target the demographics you’re selling to.
  3. Test variations to try different versions and increase your ROI.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Carrie Hill
Contributor
Carrie Hill is the co-founder of Ignitor Digital, along with long-time colleague Mary Bowling. After years working for other agencies and learning the ins and outs of great customer service, Carrie and Mary opened Ignitor Digital to serve the small and very small business with top-quality Local Search, SEO and Social Media services. When not working, Carrie loves to cook for friends and family, hang out with her pretty awesome kids, and read books that have little-to-no educational value!

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