Customer Journey SEO

I start by auditing every piece of content on the site against three journey stages: awareness, consideration, decision. I use a spreadsheet with columns for URL, title, primary keyword, stage, number of internal links pointing in, and number linking out. It takes a few hours but reveals gaps immediately.

For a B2B SaaS client in project management, I found 60 blog posts, all answering "what is project management software" — pure awareness. They had three comparison pages buried in a subfolder and a pricing page with zero internal links from any blog. I created a single consideration piece comparing project management tools vs spreadsheets, then added contextual links from five relevant awareness articles to that page, and from that page to the pricing page. Over four months, organic sessions to the pricing page rose from 200 to 650 per month, and trial sign-ups from organic went from 12 to 41 per month. The internal link structure changed the outcome more than any single piece of content.

I then do keyword research by stage. For awareness, I target questions (how-to, what-is) and broad terms. For consideration, I look for "best", "vs", "alternative", and "review" queries. For decision, I build pages around "buy", "pricing", "demo", and brand terms. I use a keyword tool but the real skill is judging intent from search results — if every top result is a comparison article, the keyword is consideration, not decision. I also ensure on-page elements like the SEO title and meta description match that stage's intent; my notes on [On Page SEO](/on-page-seo/) cover how I optimise each element. For the linking strategy, I follow a simple rule: every awareness piece links to at least one consideration piece, and every consideration piece links to a decision page. I document these links in the spreadsheet and check quarterly. I also draw on the [AIDA model](/aida-model/) to structure the content so each piece nudges the reader toward the next step. The whole process is iterative — I revisit the map every quarter because search behaviour changes.

The biggest trap is mislabelling a keyword's stage. A query like "running shoes" looks top-of-funnel but often triggers commercial intent — users want to see options, not learn the history of shoes. Check the search results before you assign the stage. If the SERP shows product pages, it is decision or commercial. If it shows guides, it is awareness or consideration. A decision rule I use: if the query contains "buy", "price", "coupon", or a brand, it is decision. If it contains "best", "vs", or "review", it is consideration. Everything else is probably awareness. For a client in dog food, I categorised "best dry dog food" as awareness and wrote a blog post. It ranked but never converted because users wanted comparisons. After rewriting it as a comparison page with a clear recommendation and updating the [meta description](/meta-description/) to signal comparison intent, it started driving cart-adds.

Another watch-out is orphan content. In a travel site audit, I found 20% of destination guides had no internal links from any other page. Those guides got zero organic traffic because search engines had no path to discover them. Every new piece needs a link from at least one existing page — not just a blog homepage link, but a contextual link from a related article. I add a "Related posts" section to each guide and write one relevant anchor text pointing to an older guide. This also strengthens the topical cluster.

Do not neglect technical SEO on decision pages. A slow checkout page is a conversion killer. For an e-commerce client, the "add to cart" page loaded in 4.2 seconds on mobile. After compressing images and deferring JavaScript, it dropped to 1.8 seconds, and the add-to-cart rate increased 22%. Run Lighthouse on your decision pages first — that is where speed matters most. [SEO content strategy](/seo-content-strategy/) documents like this one should include a technical checklist.

One counter-argument I have heard: the customer journey is not linear, so why map it? My answer: mapping helps you prioritise content creation and internal link placement. Even if users jump stages, a well-linked site guides them to where you want them to go. You can still capture non-linear paths, but the structure gives a framework.

I used to treat all keywords as equal. I picked the highest monthly search volume term and built a page around it, regardless of intent. For a client selling ergonomic office chairs, I optimised their product page for "how to sit properly" because it had 10k searches. The page ranked number three, received 500 visits a month, and generated zero sales. Visitors wanted advice, not a checkout button. I eventually created a separate blog post for "how to sit properly", linked from it to the chair product page using natural anchor text, and updated the product page to target "buy ergonomic office chair". The product page traffic dropped to 200 visits but the conversion rate jumped from 0% to 3.2% — 6 sales per month. Always match the page type to the query intent, not the search volume.

I also ignored the middle of the funnel. For an online courses client, I had plenty of "what is Python" articles and a "Python course pricing" page, but nothing for "Python vs R" or "best Python course for beginners". Visitors who landed on the awareness article had nowhere to go except back to search. After I created four comparison guides and linked to them from the relevant awareness posts, the pricing page saw a 70% increase in organic traffic and a 40% increase in trial sign-ups. The missing consideration stage was costing conversions.

Another mistake was treating internal linking as a technical exercise rather than a user journey tool. I used to link from blog posts to the homepage or service pages because those had high authority. Now I link to the next logical piece of content based on the stage. For example, from an awareness article about "what is SEO", I link to a consideration article like "SEO tools compared" rather than a service page. The user is not ready for a decision yet. Linking to a decision page too early can increase bounce rate. I cover this more in my [SEO copywriting](/seo-copywriting/) note. The fix was simple: before publishing any piece, I identify the most relevant content for the next stage and link to it contextually.