How to master user intent with SEO personas

Mastering user intent is all about putting yourself in your user’s shoes. It’s easier to do that if you know what kind of shoes they’re wearing and why.

Create and incorporate user personas in SEO decision-making to create actionable insights in the best interest of your actual users.

Build your search personas

User personas can help you develop a more customized approach to applying user intent to a topic and to your specific users. 

You aren’t just selling a garden rake to someone in Indiana – you’re selling a metal rake to Gretel in Pawnee so she can get rid of slugs in her front yard.

To develop your personas, make a list of your typical users based on what they know, want, and ask. Then, add details about what, how, and where they search.

Consider key factors about your user, then add more specifics based on your industry.

• How much do they know about this topic?
• Are they going to be a one-time or regular visitor?
• How likely are they to buy?
• How long will it take them to make a decision or purchase?
• What kind of features will they need?
• Will their behavior change over time?
• What kinds of brands do they trust?
• What’s their education status or reading comprehension?
• What’s their age range?
• Where are they in their career?
• What’s their location?
• What’s their financial status?
• What are their goals? What do they want to do when they come to my site?
• What would make them trust me?

Creative exercises for inspiration

• Build your personas around real people. Which celebrity would be most likely to be spotted with your product? Which fictional characters would your brand be most appealing to? 
• Your personas don’t have to be people; they can reflect your brand personality. Try using something more abstract like animals, colors, flowers, or cities. Your “power user” could be a Lamborghini, Godzilla, or a Red Power Ranger. 
• Test your persona drafts using ChatGPT or another AI tool. Try this prompt: “Create three variations of a person who fits this description.” Then refine and iterate.
• Start with a Dungeons & Dragons character sheet. Think about strengths, weaknesses, proficiencies, ideals, alignment, background, and personality.

Dig deeper: How to optimize for search intent: 19 practical tips

Example persona exercise

Let’s say you run a gardening ecommerce site. 

While all your users have the same hobby in common, the what, why, and how behind their searches might look very different. 

Your content needs to reflect your target audience.

Lawn Lover Larry 

• Summary: Larry’s retired and invests most of his time maintaining the perfect lawn. He loves having people over for barbecues. He likes when he knows how to do things but gets frustrated easily when he doesn’t.
• Quote: “What will the neighbors think.”
• Motivation: Curb appeal, perfection, feeling superior.
• Wants: Lawn maintenance tools, latest cultivars to stand out, tool organization ideas.
• Likes: Riding lawnmowers, DIY, cornhole.
• Dislikes: Weeds, neighbor dogs, trespassers.
• Emotions: Pride, frustration.
• Trusts: Facebook, friends, big box gardening center.
• Ask: “How do I…”, “what’s the best…”
• Search: Video, text.

Beginner Betty

• Summary: Betty has a few hard-to-kill indoor plants and wants to develop her green thumb outdoors on her patio. She’s just learning how to garden and is easily overwhelmed.
• Quote: “Plant mom vibes.”
• Motivation: Keep plants alive, build confidence.
• Wants: Simple tutorials, new inspiration.
• Likes: Blooming plants, evergreens, succulents, cute pots.
• Dislikes: Condescension, plant pests, dead leaves.
• Emotions: Confusion, excitement.
• Trusts: Pinterest, Tiktok.
• Ask: “How to…”, “what is…”, “what do…”
• Search: Video, image.

Herbalist Herb

• Summary: Herb grows his own produce and wants his garden to work for him. He doesn’t care if his garden is ugly as long as it’s productive. When he’s not gardening, Herb loves foraging for mushrooms and berries with his dog. 
• Quote: “Function over form.”
• Motivation: Fresh food, less waste.
• Wants: Plant characteristics, leaf and fruit details.
• Likes: Compost, fungi, herbs, fruits, veggies.
• Dislikes: Rules, order, toxic plants.
• Emotions: Curiosity, patience.
• Trusts: Forums, local hardware store.
• Ask: “Can I…”, “what does…”
• Search: Text, image.

Native Nancy

• Summary: Nancy loves creating a living garden because of the benefits to local animals and the environment. She needs detailed info about which plants are native and how they add value to wildlife.
• Quote: “My honeysuckle brings all the birds to the yard.”
• Motivation: Plant natives, all-season interest.
• Wants: Native perennials, shrubs, and trees.
• Likes: Butterflies, hummingbirds, mulch, ponds.
• Dislikes: Invasives, native lookalikes, destructive pests, annuals.
• Emotions: Patience, eagerness.
• Trusts: Forums, YouTube, local garden shop experts, books.
• Ask: “Is it…”, “vs.”, “should…”, “where…”
• Search: Image, text.

Greenhouse Greta

• Summary: Greta has been so successful at gardening that she started her own backyard business. She grows, propagates, and sells plants from her home, so she needs to make sure the plants she gets will get her maximum profit.
• Quote: “Show me the green.”
• Motivation: Sell low-investment, high-value plants to make money.
• Wants: Seeds, tools, propagation supplies.
• Likes: Bulk discounts, free shipping, high germination rate.
• Dislikes: Slow response times, inefficiency.
• Emotions: Frustration, determination.
• Trusts: Business owners and peers, customers, YouTube.
• Ask: “Is it worth it?”, “how much…”
• Search: Video, text.

Dig deeper: Content mapping: Who, what, where, when, why and how

Use SERPs to validate personas 

Analyze search results to see how each persona might be searching. This is where your expertise will come in handy, or where you can lean on a subject matter expert (SME).

SERP example

Using our gardening personas, let’s look at a typical search result. Users coming to a gardening site might be searching for a specific plant they want to research or buy, like the American germander plant.

Keyword: “teucrium canadense”

Think about:

• From our personas, who is most likely searching by the common plant name versus the Latin name, and why?
• Where would they have heard that name?
• Is there another common or regional name the plant goes by?
• Is there another plant that could easily be mistaken for it?

Beginner Betty might have seen the term on a plant tag. Maybe Native Nancy saw the name in a book or blog.

Long-tail keywords

Autofill searches with more specific keywords give us some extra clues about who’s searching and why.

• Host plant: That’s probably Nancy, who wants to know what bugs and pollinators are attracted to this plant. 
• Propagation: Propagating a plant by seed, division, or cuttings could be a question from Greta, Nancy, or Herb. Larry might want to know this, but he’d be searching like “does this plant spread.”
• Go botany: That’s a website about native plants, including how to identify them and their benefits. That sounds like Herb or Nancy. This is a branded search, so it could be a competitor to research.
• Medicinal uses: That’s right up Herb’s alley, and maybe Greta.

Dig deeper: 9 tips to get the full SEO benefits of long-tail keywords

SERP features

People Also Ask gives us a few more ideas.

• Is it invasive: Larry and Nancy would both want to avoid planting this. Betty needs to know this, but she might not think to check.
• What does it taste like: Herb or Nancy would probably like to know this.
• What’s it used for: Herb or Betty might ask this, or maybe Greta if she wants to know how to market it to customers.

Putting personas into action

Do this exercise with a few of the top keywords you’re targeting, and for a few random ones that represent your current website. Use that insight to tweak your personas.

After doing this exercise with a few SERPs, think about whether there’s any search you can’t really pinpoint to a given user or if your personas are so broad they could apply to any search.

Consider any subtypes of users you might want to expand on. Maybe Nancy A is in zone 5, so she won’t be interested in tropical plants or ponds. And Nancy B lives in Hawaii, so you can’t ship to her directly and need to make shipping policies more obvious or show alternative plants or stores.

Dig deeper: How to analyze Google’s SERPs

Optional: Create anti-personas

Is there a type of user you want to avoid attracting? 

An anti-persona is someone who might misuse your product in unintentional or nefarious ways and damage your brand. 

Including anti-personas can help you avoid PR disasters like the Tide pod challenge.

From our gardening example, maybe you identify an anti-persona, HOA Henry. 

He has a specific idea of what a garden should look like. 

He might buy herbicide from your site and spray it on neighbors’ yards without understanding how it could harm plants, wildlife, and even pets. 

How would you keep someone like him from finding your products? What kind of search phrases and info would he use compared to your target users?

Add some data to your persona identities

Pair your personas with insights from analytics tools, user testing, and customer feedback. Get some real quotes, images, and video clips to pair with your personas.

Go to analytics tools and find out (or guess) what percentage of your user base is and how your site reflects them. Then, build your optimization strategy around what you learn.

Some insight examples from our gardening website:

• If 70% of your users identify as a Larry, make sure your lawncare category content is prominent, and include info that’s relevant to him on product pages.
• If Nancy converts the highest, look into how you can convert other personas better while maintaining the features Nancy likes. And include Nancy in user testing!
• If Betty might evolve into Nancy, give her lots of informational content so she’ll be a brand ambassador in the future.
• If Greta mostly spends time on a certain section of the site, show her relevant articles to get her to similar topics.
• If Herb uses wildly different phrasing from Larry, research synonyms and secondary keywords to optimize for both.
• If Herb and Nancy like using forums, build your linking strategy around the sites they’re most likely to use.

Approach content for each user persona

Now use your personas to ensure you’re creating content that’s helpful and targeted for each user. Do an audit of your content with each persona in mind. 

For example, Larry doesn’t want to know about how leaves can benefit bugs, but he could learn about how they benefit his lawn and save money on fertilizer.

Betty might need to understand her planting zone and frost dates before she starts buying vegetable seeds. 

User persona content checklist

• Who is this content and each section written for?
• Are you answering each user’s questions with your content? 
• Have you answered all of their questions fully and comprehensively?
• Are you speaking in terms they will understand?
• Is the content too technical or too formal?
• Are you including info in the format they want?
• When would they need this info? 
• Do you have the links and tools they’ll need?

As you work through this exercise, does one persona stand out as a potential brand champion?

This is someone who would write glowing reviews and recommend your brand to others.

You may want to spend extra time creating content for this user to help passively build your brand presence.

Homepage exercise

Start with your homepage.

• Which personas are you attracting?
• Who is it made for?
• Would anyone feel left out or unclear on what they can do next?

Take a look at any popular gardening website.

• Who would you guess is the target user?
• Which of our example personas does it seem to focus on?
• What would you change for each persona?

Weave personas into your SEO processes

Once you’ve established and refined your personas, include them in any SEO strategy session and decisions.

Encourage your SEO editorial team to identify which personas you’re targeting for a page before they start writing or updating. Come back to your personas regularly.

One fun idea is to invite your users to your meetings. This gets people talking and thinking about what’s best for the user. 

• Print out your personas and put them on your team’s bulletin board or whiteboard. 
• Bring a copy to meetings and tape persona pictures to an empty chair.
• Assign someone to speak up as the Voice of the User in discussions.
  • “I think Greenhouse Greta would like this approach better because…”
  • “I like this option as a Nancy. Can a Herb weigh in?”
  • “Herb should celebrate when we announce this new feature…”
• Have the team self-select into each persona and let them speak for their user group.
  • “As a Lawn Lover Larry…” 
  • “Can we see the user test results from the other Betty?”