SEO and the Buyer's Journey for Logistics Brands

By Nate Dame, CEO and Founder, Propecta

We know that mapping marketing activities to that journey increases revenue opportunities, but how do you actually do that? You might be surprised how much a modern SEO strategy can help.

Step 1: Define Your Buyer’s Journey

You may have a general idea about the path your audience takes to becoming a client, but take the time to clarify it. Marketing and Sales will have to work together to get this right, and you might need to define a unique path for each buyer persona.

Step 2: Use Keyword Research as Market Research

A modern SEO keyword strategy is inseparable from user intent, or the intent behind the keyword. Google defines four possible intents, but for our purposes they are essentially learn and purchase.

When someone types “logistics” into Google, does he want to learn or does he want to purchase? Google analyzes user behavior 24/7 to figure that out and display the results users favor. Ranking well, then, means providing what users want, and discovering what they want means looking at search results for your target keywords. You might be surprised what you find.

Step 3: Map and Optimize Existing Content

With buyer journeys in one hand and user intent insights in the other, look at the content you already have on your site:

1. Map each major piece to a buyer journey. Is it TOFU? Is it a deal-closer? Make sure to check against user intent info. You might think that your warehousing sales page is TOFU, when in fact, “warehousing” search results are mostly informational content. In that case, your sales page might be further down the funnel than you think.
2. Optimize the existing content. Make sure there are no technical errors holding back your SEO efforts, and that the content you have is helpful, engaging, and earning it’s own popularity. If it’s not, update the keyword strategy, improve the content, and/or start earning good links.

Step 4: Fill in the Gaps

Once all of your existing content has a home, and is optimized for search results, start filling in the gaps on your buyers’ journeys. Keyword/user intent research can help here too, as you discover which search terms return entry-level content in search results.