Though there are many actions you can take to optimise your website for search without knowing your audience, having an understanding of who is using your site can enable you to take your SEO to the next level. Knowing your audience allows you to provide content and a user experience that best suits them. And, as Google is all for improving user experience, this can really help boost your website’s rankings in search.
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What are audience demographics?
Demographics are the details about the people who visit your website. They can include general information such as age range, gender, location and education level, but can also be really specific, down to their hobbies and products bought.
Though this level of detail may be unreachable for many businesses, the more in-depth information you know about your customers, the better. We’re going to look into how you can get that detail soon.
Remember that, when it comes to demographics, there is some element of generalisation. Not every visitor to your website will be a 45-year-old woman who works as a teacher, has two children and likes to spend summers in Portugal. But a large group of your audience may be full-time working women over 40 who have a family of teenagers and enjoy holidaying abroad in Europe. People who fall into those groups are likely to have a number of similar pain-points, needs, and wishes, and you can use that information to help them resolve those.
How to find your audience demographics
Finding this kind of information about your users is not always easy. But taking the time to do so will not only help your SEO, it will aid your broader marketing strategy and can even influence wider business developments such as the type of product you stock or the way you run a service.
Customer surveys
Asking your customers directly is a great way to find out more about them. Create a questionnaire – you can do so for free with software such as Google Forms – by thinking about the type of information that would be helpful to you. Then, unless previous customers have opted out of communications, you can send them the questionnaire and then analyse the results.
In these cases, it often helps to offer some kind of incentive – such as entry into a prize draw – to encourage more responses.
Website analytics demographic reports
The likes of Google Analytics 4 (GA4) can collect demographics about users based on anonymised data sent from your website. GA4 can collect information such as age group, language, location, gender and interests. You can even see how much and in what way different audience groups interact with your website. You might, for example, get more visits from age group 25-34, but those aged 45-54 may spend more money.
Access this information by opening your GA4 account then selecting Reports > User > User Attributes > Overview.
Remember, you should always ask users to opt in to the collection of this kind of data. You can do so through the use of a Cookie Consent banner on your website.
Search behaviour
How are searchers finding your website? What kind of searches are they entering into Google (or other search engines) before landing on your site? This won’t give you a hard and fast list of demographics, but it will give you clues to analyse and extract information from.
Look at searches that end in question marks to discover pain points, or analyse the kind of language utilised. These can all give you small but handy clues about your audience and how they might react with your website.
Google Search Console is an excellent free tool for looking at when your website appears in search, and when users click through to your site. You can also use tools such as Google Trends to look for popular searches in your niche. Combine your research here with information from a site like the inLinks Audience Finder: by entering relevant keywords, you can see more about the demographics of the people most likely to use that search.
In-person observation
If you interact with your users face-to-face, such as in a physical store, you can observe useful information about them. Though a little more interpretive than something like Google Analytics, this can be a great way of getting to know your customers in a more personal way, with anecdotal evidence to help you build audience groups. Chatting to customers is a way of extracting useful details about individuals, too.
Purchases
What kind of products are your customers buying? And what can this tell you about them as people? Perhaps they’re more likely to purchase items in cardboard boxes rather than in plastic – that could mean they’re concerned about the environment. Or maybe you have more people selecting items for young children, suggesting your demographics have families.
Social insights
If you have active social platforms, you’ll find useful demographics here. These will be somewhat skewed by the type of platform (an audience on Facebook, for example, is different to an audience on TikTok), but will still give you an idea of the type of people interested in your content.
Compare your social insights to your website- if they’re very different, it could mean that something is missing from your website and that the message isn’t quite right.
Analyse secondary data
Once you know some general information about your audience, you can dig a little deeper into trends based on other research. For example, if you see your customers buying lots of eco products, you can look into secondary data and discover that millennials make up the highest percentage of eco-conscious buyers. Looking again into more millennial demographics, you find that a lot of them enjoy crafting. So there could be space in your online store for eco-friendly crafting materials, or you could write a guide on crafting using recycled materials.
How to influence SEO with your audience demographics
So now that you know more about your audience and customers, how do you continue reaching out to them through effective demographic-led SEO strategies?
Adjust your language
Does your written content use the same kind of language as your audience? Is it littered with Gen Z colloquialisms that your Baby Boomer audience doesn’t understand? Writing in a way that resonates with your users is more likely to engage them and encourage purchases. If you get it completely wrong, you could end up alienating the people who would otherwise buy from you.
Use the right kind of content
Website content isn’t all text. If your audience is part of a demographic that enjoys short-form video content, then you should make sure that’s part of your site. Not only will this encourage visitors to engage, it increase your chance of being seen in search in a different format – such as the videos that are presented at the top of certain SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
Consider accessibility
Does a large number of your audience have accessibility needs? This could range from visually impaired users who benefit from descriptive image alt tags or high-contrast text, to those who may not be website literate and so may require simplified website navigation.
Accessibility also covers the language of your site. If you have a lot of users from abroad, would it be beneficial to include your site in a second language? Although international website visitors can make use of translators, you remove a barrier by presenting the website in their own language without the use of additional tools.
Accessibility should always be an important consideration when it comes to SEO, but it should take an even higher priority if it effects a significant chunk of your audience.
Update imagery
Do your images appeal to the right audience? A family-orientated audience, for example, may be more engaged by relevant images that have a family focus, whereas someone from London might appreciate city-relevant images over a relaxed country scene.
Use the right social platforms
SEO isn’t all about what’s happening on your site – it can be affected by external sources such as social sites, and an active presence on these can improve your search rankings. Larger companies may have a presence across all the major social media sites, but smaller businesses may need to choose just one or two based on their budget and available time. Knowing your demographics means you can find out which social platforms your audience spends time on, and so you can reach them there instead of wasting time on ineffective sites.
In-bound links
In-bound links are those where an external website has linked to your site. They are important part of SEO for demonstrating trustworthiness and expertise. Some in-bound links will be picked up organically when other sites find your content, but you can also actively seek in-bound links as part of an SEO strategy. Approaching other sites that are of interest to your audience and, for example, offering to provide a guest blog or interview, means that you can reach potential future users in places they already know and trust.
Adopt to behaviour patterns
Different user groups will change their behaviours at different times of the year, or in response to different events. If you can piggy back off these or proactively anticipate changing trends, you can get ahead with your marketing.
Take, for example, a demographic of child-free 30-year-olds who love to travel. This audience will want to travel abroad but will probably want to do so outside of school holidays. Knowing this, you can add content, offers, products and more to your site at appropriate times of the year, just before the trends come into effect.
If you’re an adult-only attraction in a tourist hotspot, you might find that this is your ideal audience. So, instead of competing against other attractions that are fighting for the summer holiday traffic, you can instead delay until September, and launch your main marketing then. This could include hyper-focused guides, special offers, and other relevant information that such a user would find helpful or interesting.
Product marketing
What is your audience buying, when are they buying it, and how much are they spending? If you have an e-commerce site, these questions can all be answered with knowledge of your audience demographics. Prioritise optimising your most relevant products with some of the methods mentioned above, and adjusting them to better appeal to your most active users. You can also adjust your pricing based on trends, provide additional information that may be particularly useful to your chosen users, and use carefully selected product placement to upsell.
Conclusion
Understanding user demographics is a vital part of any successful marketing activity. For SEO in particular, you can use methods such as website analytics analysis, user surveys and search behaviour to learn more about your audience and their pain-points. By utilising this information, you can prioritise certain SEO improvements such as accessibility, adjust your offerings based on demographic behaviour trends, and relate more to your audience through appropriate language, imagery and content format.
