Show Some Psychology in SEO, Google Will Thank You

What if Freud was an SEO Consultant - A Brief Treatise on Psychology in SEO

There's no doubt, you must have come across websites that resemble phone directories. Empty, bland, and possessing about as much personality as a slug. Sometimes, the culprit is simply poorly executed web copywriting, sorely lacking in creativity. More often, it's well-meaning individuals who have convinced themselves that, to create a well-optimized and converting website, the personality of visitors has no place in the process.

Many studies in organic SEO are conducted on the three main pillars of SEO: technique, link building, and content. The most surprising thing about content (the only pillar that directly addresses the user) is that there are very few articles on psychology, user behavior. Isn't it absurd to address humans through SEO content without taking their personalities into consideration?

🚀 Quick read: what you will learn in this article

• Relationship between psychology and SEO: adapting your content creation according to your audience allows you to perfectly respond to the search intent of the user.
• The 4 types of personalities: tips for defining the behavioral profile of your target reader.
• How to adapt your content accordingly: advice for tailoring your writing to the 4 main personality types.

😲 Freud, Jung, and SEO

There are many modern theories on the study of human behavior. One of the most influential studies is undoubtedly found in the work of Swiss psychologist, Carl Gustav Jung. Jung is considered the psychiatrist who invented "analytical psychology" and was a disciple of Freud.

He defined individual behavior as belonging to four different types: intuition, sensation, thought, and feeling, thus creating 8 major types of psyches. According to Jung, a person's personality is a combination of these four elements.

❓ What is the relationship between psychology and SEO?

Whether you're selling face-to-face or online, you know that every consumer is different. The use of certain words, motivational factors, resonates with different personalities. Experienced sellers will know that some customers respond better to certain approaches than others, which is normal considering that no human being is exactly the same in nature.

In human terms, everyone's experience and activity mean that we all have a different perception of the same reality. And the same goes for SEO content! Behind a specific query hides a typical personality, which translates into unique content consumption needs.

Of course, the challenge with SEO (or copywriting) is that in many cases, you don't know the behavior type of the person you're writing for. That said, if you're targeting sellers, accountants, or people with a specific role, you'll find that these same people often have a similar behavior type.

There are four things to consider when identifying the type of persona behavior you're dealing with:

1. How would the persona want you to act towards them?
2. How would they like to see the information?
3. What is the optimal content length?
4. How does the persona make their purchase decision?

By examining these points, you can adapt your techniques of content creation to get closer to your personas and increase interaction with them (increase visit time, decrease bounce rate, increase conversions...).

By using the modification of your content for each behavior type, you avoid the mistake that average copywriters make. They sell or write in the same way to each persona. Instead, identify the buying behavior of your personas - what they're looking for and what will persuade them to buy your products or services.

The final step is to familiarize yourself with a personality profiling tool, there are tons of them on the Internet. I'll share mine with you below.

When you have a good understanding of the different profiles, including their behaviors, their strengths and weaknesses, and how to better communicate with different people of different types, you'll find that the performance of SEO content will significantly increase.

Understanding the user, finely describing the personality of your personas is the key to a high-performing SEO content strategy! Thanks to this, you'll send positive signals to Google.

🔎 Personalities under the microscope

Generally, personality profiling tools are based on a matrix and a color code to describe different behaviors. By directly evaluating a persona's position on each of the two "axes" of personalities, it's possible to deduce their behavior type.

There are several ways to proceed, but I've decided to reduce the presentation of the matrix to two axes:

• Introversion (self-oriented) / extraversion (others-oriented)
• Feeling (emotion-oriented) / thinking (fact-oriented)

From these two axes, we therefore deduce 4 main profile types:

The Businessman (the go-getter)

The area in the top right, represented in red, describes a personality that is both analytical (fact-oriented) and extraverted. This behavior is direct and demanding towards others, strongly motivated by success and competition in their relationships with others (a challenger at heart).

How to communicate with/write for a Businessman:

• Support his goals and objectives.
• Talk to him about challenges, concrete results.
• Argue facts, not feelings.
• Don't waste time.
• Be precise, direct, and efficient.
• Remember that his world is one of assumed difficulties, he loves a challenge!
• Motivations: success and power.

The YouTuber (the star)

In the bottom right, the yellow area represents a combination of extraversion and intuitiveness (people-oriented). This type of person is communicative and sociable and feels comfortable with anyone. Putting themselves forward poses no problem.

How to communicate with/write for the YouTuber:

• Support his opinions, ideas, and dreams.
• Let him express himself (phone, email, mandatory comment area).
• Give him compliments (thank you message).
• Remember that his world is one of pleasure.
• Motivation: pleasure.

The Moderator (the altruist)

The area in the bottom left, represented in green, describes a introverted and people-oriented personality. The moderator's behavior is stable and amiable. People of this kind are patient and persistent, they don't like change and like to take the time to plan carefully before acting.

How to communicate with/write for the Moderator:

• Support his feelings.
• Create a friendly, non-threatening environment.
• Give him time in his reflections, be patient (conversion time generally longer than other personalities).
• Remember that his world is one of stabilized harmony.
• Motivation: being useful and helping others.

The Developer (the conformist)

The last area is located in the top left, represented in blue, describes an introverted and analytical personality. The developer combines control and receptivity, and are structured and organized individuals who tend to follow the rules whenever they can. They are interested in precision and order.

How to communicate with/write for the Developer:

• Support his organized, rational, and factual approach.
• Be precise and give him time to think.
• Be systematic, accurate, organized, and prepared.
• Provide solid, tangible, and factual evidence.
• Remember that his world is one of respected rules.
• Motivation: well-done work and organization.

It's obvious that it's reductive to box everyone into one model (remember that each individual is composed of all four colors). However, models are useful for drawing broad guidelines that characterize your target persona. The goal is to determine their motivations and trigger words for actions.

Writing for the human, Google will thank you

Of course, SEO involves using the right keywords to attract the attention of a search engine and appear as the top result for a relevant search. But, regardless of the SEO techniques or the content written, it's crucial to create content for your audience, not for search engines.

This may seem obvious, but the way content is written affects how people perceive your product/service and your company (or your client's).

By conducting interviews with your salespeople and surveys of your customers, you'll be able to understand their needs, fears, and problems, as well as the words they use to express them. A good technique is to adopt the same style of speech and use psychology in SEO content to convince your audience.

## 🎬 Conclusion

Understanding the psychology of the user allows you to perfectly adapt your SEO strategy. Determining the profile of your reader to write your content will improve your SEO and skyrocket your conversion rate.

By adapting the lexical field, the semantics, the structure of the article, the tone, and the form of your text, you reach your target. Your language is therefore in perfect harmony with your persona, who feels reassured and well accompanied. That's why behavioral study is so important in organic SEO!

Taking into account the profile of your reader not only allows you to perfectly answer their questions and needs, but also to support them in their purchasing or information journey. This relationship that you then create with them will benefit you, whether for SEO or your turnover.

This post concludes the first stage of the pyramid of the keyword clustering strategy:

Did you recognize yourself? In your opinion, what is your dominant profile?

If you're interested in the subject, let me know in the comments! I will make available my detailed sheets on the vocabulary to use by profile type.