Tips on how to Analyze Your Viewers • Yoast
Marieke van de Rakt
Marieke van de Rakt is the CEO of Yoast. Her main focus is on growing the company. She attaches great importance to maintaining an open and friendly corporate culture. Marieke is also heavily involved in the marketing of Yoast and with the Yoast SEO Academy, the online course platform.
In order to write engaging copywriting for your online audience, you need to know them. Who are the people reading your stories? Who are the people looking for the terms you want to be found? Where are you from? How old are you? What are you interested in? And how can you reach these people again? In this post, I will help you research and analyze your audience as this is essential for SEO.
Why it is important to analyze your audience
If you don’t know a lot about your audience, text writing for them can be quite difficult. Should you write articles that are difficult or very easy to read? What topics will you be most interested in? What search terms do they use? What blog post will get them coming back to your website? These questions are especially important if you want your audience to become regular visitors to your website or to buy something from your online store. And then the target group analysis comes in handy! When you know a lot about your audience, it is much easier to tailor your copy to their needs. As a result, you will be more successful in selling your items and attracting those returning visitors.
What kind of people are your online audience?
A good place to start researching your online audience is with your website or social media user data. This can help you find all kinds of helpful information about your audience. Or audience. You may not have considered it yet, but there could be different groups of users visiting your website for different purposes! You should analyze your audience to find out what kind of people are visiting your website and use that information to tailor your content.
Target group analysis in Google Analytics
The best way to start analyzing your audience is by using Google Analytics. Google Analytics tells you what time of day your audience is on your website. where they come from (at least from which country); which sites they like the most and whether they use a desktop or mobile device. This is all valuable and useful information.
Closely monitor which pages and blog posts are generating heavy traffic and examine possible patterns. Perhaps posts on one topic generate a lot of traffic while posts on other topics don’t get a lot of visitors. Use this information when choosing the topic of your next blog post.
An example of the type of data you can find in Google Analytics
Social media target group analysis
Google Analytics can tell you a lot about your website visitors, but if you want to learn more about the people you reach on Facebook, you need to use Facebook Insights. Check which posts are getting a lot of views and which posts are not getting any attention from your audience. Also, experiment with buying ads on Facebook.
Of course, every social media platform has its own analytics (we also wrote about YouTube Analytics, Twitter Analytics, and Pinterest Analytics). Regularly monitor the analysis of the channels you use.
Not the audience you were hoping for?
If you are surprised by the type of people in your online audience, with this information you can do two things:
First of all, you might wonder why your website isn’t reaching your target audience, or why your content isn’t engaging them when it appears in search results or on social media. Are you using the same keywords that these people are searching for on Google? Do your SEO title and meta description match your search intent (and does the content of the page live up to that promise)? These kind of things can help you reach your target audience and make them come back.
Alternatively, you might not have the online audience that you expected, but they are and they came to your website for a reason! Another option is to learn more about your actual audience and create more content with them.
Learn more about your online audience
Whether you’re growing your existing online audience (s), customizing your content to appeal to a different audience, or both, the next step in analyzing your audience is the same. You need to learn more about these people and what they want!
Conduct surveys
A great way to get to know your audience is to fill out an online questionnaire. In a poll, you can ask them anything you want. For example, you can set up a survey that appears when you enter your website, or you can send a survey invitation to your newsletter subscribers or to the buyers of your products. There are many packages that allow online questionnaires. Many services offer a free account, which is enough for most small businesses.
Remember, most people don’t take online surveys. However, if your audience is large, you will easily get a decent number of people to fill out your questionnaire. To get more participants, you can always try to win them by giving away a nice incentive among the respondents.
Please note that there is always a certain group of people who are ready to fill out a survey. This group is very selective and not representative of your entire online audience.
Talk to your audience
Analyzing your audience doesn’t always have to be a desk activity! Just having a conversation with part of your audience also remains a great way to learn more about them. You can ask a lot of people about your product in an online questionnaire, but their answers are likely to remain flat. Being able to speak to some people in your audience in person can help you get a better idea of who your audience is. Ask them what they like best about your website, products, or blog posts. Ask them why they are returning to your website. Invite them to share their experiences and don’t be afraid of criticism.
For example, when I’m at a WordCamp or a congress somewhere and meet people who use our Yoast SEO plugin, I always like to ask them what they appreciate most about our product. It helps me understand our users. And by understanding our users, we can better anticipate their needs. Once we know which features in Yoast SEO you like the most, we should definitely tweak or expand those features.
Read comments and discussions
If you want to analyze your audience and find out who they are made up of, then you should check out the comments on your blog post. What are people saying about you or your post in the comments below your articles? What aspects of your blog post are they talking about in their comments? Which topics are so important to them that they are ready to get involved? Analyze audience comments on your website and don’t forget to monitor comments on social media too!
Aside from the comments your audience leaves on your website and social media, you can also see what they’re talking about on other websites. Websites like Reddit and online discussion forums can be a treasure trove of information. If you can figure out where your audience is online, take a look at them and see what they’re talking about!
Analyzing the online audience is difficult but valuable
In conclusion, researching your audience can be a tough nut to crack. Google Analytics and the analytics tools on the numerous social media platforms are useful, but they don’t say much about your audience’s intentions or desires. Surveys are great, but since most people don’t fill out an online questionnaire, the data isn’t as valid and representative of your entire audience. Talking to your audience can be useful, but you won’t be able to talk to everyone either.
However, all of the different ways to analyze your audience add value in their own way. However, using all of them will give you a clear idea of your audience. So don’t just sit there and wonder who is behind those clicks. Get to know you!
Read more: An introduction to user research »