Becky Simms, CEO of Reflect Digital, explains how you can use your SEO strategy to better communicate with your audience.
Love is in the air as Valentine’s Day approaches and we’ve been contemplating the key to every successful relationship; good communication.
Dr Gary Chapman says the key to a lasting relationship is learning and using each other’s love language. There are five key love languages and all people have a predisposed preference to being communicated within one of these five ways.
The idea that a relationship can be strengthened on the basis of the right communication style being in place is a concept that also serves well in the corporate world. The COVID-19 pandemic has seen a shift in the tone of voice for many brands, a move to being more authentic and open than ever before. The idea that we are all in the same boat has been a standout message from many brands and, in our opinion, this authenticity is here to stay in the B2C world as well as the B2B world.
The key thing to remember is that all communication is human-to-human and if brands ever needed a trigger to realise that, 2020 gave them this.
SEO needs to communicate in a more human manner
This is something you have heard reiterated from us time and time again but what do we really mean and how can this be practically implemented within your business?
For so long SEOs have been chasing the algorithm, but without realising the algorithm has been chasing human behaviour online to define its decision making.
Therefore to win at search marketing, is to be more human in approach.
So ask yourself, does your current SEO strategy really communicate with your audience in a way that they find compelling or are you still trying to converse with the algorithm?
Have you truly considered your keyword strategy from a human perspective and what your users’ intent might be? This deeper strategic view gives you a different lens to ensure that your landing pages fit within the user journey based on intent. Getting this right will positively impact your conversion rate. Missing this step can so easily lead to users landing at the wrong step in their journey just because that was the easiest page to optimise, and this is the quickest way to lose a user.
Tips for making your communications more human
What defines your customers’ decision making, and what makes them feel loved enough to align and commit to your brand? We’ve got some practical tips to help your content creation and get your SEO more aligned with your customers’ language.
We’re confident if you implement these neuro principles into your online content you’ll see positive results in your SEO and conversion.
- Be authentic – authenticity drives connection.
- Be more descriptive and fun – humans find descriptive words more engaging to read.
- Bring emotion into your content – what feelings does your product or service evoke and how can you use this?
- Be outside in, not inside out – think about your audience’s challenges and needs first before broadcasting what you do.
- Think about context not just explaining the features – what is the impact?
- Bring a balance of Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic language
- example visual language – ie using words like see, shows, dream, observe, foresee.
- example auditory language – announce, hear, state, tell, listen.
- example kinesthetic language – feel, motion, build, support, foundation, active.
- Be balanced, be human first when it comes to content, and continue to include the right signals for Google.
- Consider human motivations – you are looking to attract a human, so think about their intrinsic motivators and how you can use this to draw them in.
- Be sticky – make your content memorable.
- Provoke emotion – after all, you are dealing with humans.
Becky has covered these her talk; Neuro Principles for Writing Content and you can download the slides for a more in-depth look.