Alright so you want to build a new website. And you want to make it as optimized for SEO and UX as possible before going live. In this guide I will take you through a step-by-step process on how to do that.

A quick overview what to expect in this guide:

1. Step 1: Your client’s vision
2. Step 2: Identifying and prioritizing visitors
3. Step 3: Keyword research
4. Step 4: Writing style
5. Step 5: Setting up the website
6. Tools / formulas / references used

A little heads up. I don’t have access to any paid tools. So it might be possible to do some steps way faster than I describe them. Any comments on this part will be greatly appreciated.

1. Your client’s vision

We start off by identifying the company. Basic questions like What the company does, How the company does it and how they are different than competitors. We do this during an interview with someone high up the hierarchy. This can be the CEO, director or manager -- someone who has an overview of the company and access all the company’s data. The interview usually takes several hours so be prepared for that or split the interview into a few smaller ones handling specific topics in each.

Tip: Send your questions in advance so they can prepare.

During this/these interview(s) at least the questions below should be answered, but in any interview there is room for improv if you hear something interesting.

Questions to ask

Ask for a tour of the company. This way you can really “feel” the company. What worth a tour exactly has is hard to describe, but besides it being fun and interesting for you and your client (most of the time they are very proud of the company) I find that you have a better general understanding of your client and the company.

• Past
  • Brief history of the company including employee numbers, revenue, profit margins and products / services provided.
• Present
  • What current product / services does the company provide?
  • What are the company’s business goals?
  • Company’s marketing plan, and an explanation how the website fits into this plan.
  • Why isn’t there a website already?
  • Make a list of all the competitors and describe why they are competitors and in which way the company is better.
  • What are the current customers segments?
  • List of current revenue segments including profit margins.
  • Current UVPs.
  • How many employees does the company have and how many external workers?
  • What’s important for the company to show?
  • What’s important for customers to know?
  • Any other important developments internal and external that might play a role?
• Future
  • What product / services does the company plan on providing in the future?
  • What are the company’s business goals for the next few years?
  • Are there any significant developments among the competitors?
  • What are the customers segments the company wants for the future?
  • List of revenue segments including profit margins which the company wants for the future.
  • Future UVPs
  • How does the company see the future of their employees and external workers?
  • What are the expectations for the website? What does the site need to do (in a realistic way) so your client will be happy?

Tip: Tape the conversation! In my experience this interview will be a big one and after half an hour you will start to forget things even if you wrote main points down. If you just tape it you can always listen again and make sure you make no mistakes.

When you got the answers to all these questions and more, you should know the following:

• General idea of the company
• Business goals
• General marketing plan and the website’s role
• Current customers segments and the segments to focus on for the future
• Site goals

Since you now have a good idea what the website will be used for you can go to the next step. The people you will be creating the website for.

2. Identifying and prioritizing visitors

The process described below will have some similarities with the process as described by Vanessa Fox: Using Personas to Boost Online Marketing and SEO.

Make another appointment with your client. This won’t be an interview, but more like a meeting which you lead. In general you want the people in your meeting who are connected to your company’s (potential) customers in some way. Mostly this meeting involves someone from management, marketing, sales and buying. Of course this can differ per industry.

Tip: Don’t make this meeting to formal. Part of the meeting is brainstorming and people giving their opinion. In my experience this works better when the meeting is informal and laid-back. Make sure everyone feels comfortable to say their two cents. You can’t say anything stupid in this stage of the development!

Start the meeting by explaining why you are here and what the goal is. The goal of the meeting is to create a list of people who will most likely visit your website, which goal they will have and what questions will arise while they are trying to achieve that goal.

Make a list

Start by asking everyone in the meeting who you might expect on the website and what their goal is. At this point it doesn’t matter how relevant the visitor is for your goals or the volume of traffic coming from this segment. Just write it all down. You will most likely end up with a list of at least 10 segments, but most common is 30+. The numbers may vary heavily since this process is a bit arbitrary. For example:

Your client is The Most Awesome Duck Ever which has one product they provide: Robotic ducks. Since they are the only company in the world who sells robotic ducks, they expect a lot of traffic from students. But it’s arbitrary in how to segment the students:

• Students

OR

• Elementary school students who want to make a short presentation on robots, ducks or animal replication.
• Middle school students who are looking for information on robots, ducks or animal replication for an essay.
• High school students who are looking for information on robots, ducks or animal replication for an essay.
• College students who are looking for information on robots, ducks or animal replication for a paper.

OR

• Robotics related students who are looking for information on robots for an essay.
• Animal related students who are looking for information on animal replication for an essay.
• All other students who are looking for information on robots or animal replication for an essay.

OR

• Freshman robotics related students who are looking for information on robots for an essay.
• Sophomore year robotics related students who are looking for information on robots for an essay.
• Third year robotics related students who are looking for information on robots for an essay.
• Etc…

OR

• Robotics related college students who are looking for information on robots for an essay.
• Robotics related college students who are looking for an internship.
• Robotics related college students who are looking for a job.

As you can see there are many ways to chop up your visitors. I can’t really explain how deep you should go or which way to chop them up. The general rule of thumb is you separate visitors when they have significant other goals or when they need significant other information to complete their goal.

For example an elementary school student will need some general information, nice pictures and are most likely to get help from an adult. While a college student will need deep information on how the system works that is used to make sure the robot maintains his balance while walking. So those are valid separate segments.

You can use the following things into consideration when splitting up visitor segments:

• Gender
• Demographics
• Income
• Geographic location
• Age
• Living situation
• Job function or current study
• Industry

I can’t really put a number on how many visitor segments you should end up with. Generally speaking it should be more than you expected and don’t be surprised if you get 25+. Don’t worry, you won’t have to take all these segments into account when you are creating your website.

Thin the list

So you got this huge list of visitors and goals. But who are actually worth your time? Well that’s the next step. Segments which are worth your time are segments who:

• Represent a (potential) customer
• Represent a significant amount of traffic
• Are in another way interesting to the company (potential employees, internships, etc.)

Separate the segments and make two lists. Worth your time and not worth your time (DON’T delete either list. You can use this later on). Again this is an arbitrary process so the numbers may vary heavily. Sometimes nearly 90% of the visitor segments goes into the not worth your time list, sometimes only 10%. If you have doubts about in which list someone belongs put them in the worth your time list.

What do they want to know?

Alright now take the worth your time list. So you got a list of potential interesting visitor segments. Now what? Well now we start brainstorming the questions they might have. So start with the first visitor segment and start thinking about what these visitors want to know.

Tip: I’ve made a big list of questions, topics and other stuff that might help come up with ideas. It’s located at the bottom of this document.

Start writing down all the questions people in the meeting come up with. Try to divide them into topics, but remember that it’s a brainstorm kind of meeting so if it’s going to fast just go with the flow and write all questions down without topics. Do not to eliminate any sort of question at this stage. During brainstorm nothing can be excluded. We will get to that later.

Example:

Visitor segment: Adult with 100k+ income who wants to buy a toy for his child.

• What can it do?
• Is it safe for a young child?
• Can a young child operate this robot duck?
• How strong is it?
• How much does it cost?
• How long will it last?
• Who else sells this?
• How do I buy it?
• Can I have it wrapped up in Santa paper?

Now the amount of questions you will get will be substantial. The more product / services your company provides the bigger the list will be, since you can have specific questions about each product / service. You should at least be able to come up with 30+ questions but more likely is 50+.

After you'r done with visitor segment number one move on to the next segment and add all the questions they might have that aren’t already on your list. This should result in a huge list of questions of different topics.

It’s your job to keep the energy flowing. Keep everyone engaged and makes sure you stay on topic. Try to eliminate discussions between people so everyone keeps on spitting out useful stuff and the group stays in “the zone”.

It’s a lot to handle I know. No sweat, you’re a pro right?

After all the visitor segments have had a turn the meeting is over. So you end up with either a whiteboard filled with questions, papers, excel sheets or whatever it is you used to write everything down. For most companies putting together this file is a real eye opener. Most people on the inside of a company don’t realize how much questions customers have and how much the questions can vary.

I suggest you take everything with you and stop working on this project for the day.

Eliminating questions

Rise and shine! It’s a brand new day so let’s carry on with The Most Awesome Duck website. In some format you got a bunch of questions. So grab a cup of coffee and start putting all the questions in an Excel sheet. Divide the questions by topic. This usually means moving some questions around a few times, but that’s ok.

After writing down all the questions and having them organized in topics send the file to your client with the question:

Would you be so kind to delete all the questions which:

• You can’t answer
• You don’t want to answer

This should thin out the list big time. Most companies aren’t that big on giving away details. So be prepared to have entire topics vanquished from your sheet. No biggie, just work with the topics you CAN write about.

Now we are getting somewhere. We got a big excel sheet with all kinds of questions visitors might have AND the company is willing to give an answer to. So can we make a website now? Hahaha, yea good one…

Squishing segments together

So what you want to do now is try to shrink down all the stuff you have to write even more. Do this by doing the following:

On the left, place all the questions you have. On the top, place all the visitor segments you got.

Tip: It works faster if you assign a symbol to each visitor segment since the name can take up a lot of room.

Now place a 1 when the question applies to the visitor segment or place a 0 when it doesn’t.

Example:

Again it’s a lot of work, I know.

When you’re done you can filter the results. Select segment “A” and filter all the “1’s” and “0’s” from high-low. So all the “1’s” are at the top. You will find several visitor segments which overlap greatly (70 – 90%). With overlap I mean having a lot of “1’s” and “0’s” in common with another segment. In the example above its visitor segment A and D which overlap.

Squish overlapping segment together and rename the new segment. If you apply this correctly you should end up with about five-ish visitor segments.

Whoppa, now that looks like something you could use right? Exactly! Now these segments are pretty similar to a persona. But they are not as detailed. In my experience you don’t need an actual persona to create awesome landing pages. So I won’t call them personas. Instead I will stick with the term “visitor segments”. Now your visitor segments just need one more thing…

Adding motivations

That’s right. The motivation each visitor segment has. Now there are so many ways you can divide motivations. I can’t talk about them all. Below here are many websites and blog that talk about motivation.

The wheel of persuasion - Motivation @ wikipedia - 12 techniques - VKStudios 26 blog posts about persuasion – What’s in it for me? - What motivates us (youtube) –

Tip: Coursera – gamification course

Keep as a general rule that you want to add one or two motivators to each visitor segment. For example:

College student looking for a cool new gadget:

· Status: looking / feeling cool

Now this might look easy, but if you talk about the motivations with several people you will find that it’s not that easy to actually find out why someone does something. Be sure NOT to go into motivations to deep. Keep it on the surface. By saying that the student wants to look cool you got a general idea what the text and feeling of the upcoming pages have to represent if they want to talk to this segment of visitors.

3. Keywords

So we are almost done right? Nope, not really. But I hope you already feel the end result getting better.

Making the list

We got all the questions we can think of, we got the company’s information and what they think is important to know and show. Combine all that information and start extracting all the possible keywords. Break down the questions into search phrases / keywords and do the same for your conversation with the company. Bundle them into topics that make sense. For example:

Most Awesome Duck Ever keyword list 1.0:

Turns into:

• Duck
• Robot
• Toy
• Cost
• Safety
• Child
• Age
• Small parts
• Program
• Programmable
• Balance
• Sound

Then make new words that make sense. Combine words, singulars and plurals, etc…

• Big robot duck
• Cheap robot toy
• Duck toy
• Robot safety
• Toy safety
• Etc…

Tip: Make a separate list of all the prepositions you might want to add. Don’t combine them just yet or the number of keywords will be so big you will drown in data.

Alright I’ll say it once more. Yes this is a lot of work. Luckily most of us get paid by the hour J.

After this you should have an enormous list. In the hundreds or thousands of keywords depending on how many products/ services you provide. But that’s cool, cause we guys like data right!

Let your client thin it out

Now divide all the keywords into topics that make sense. Just to get a better overview of all the keywords. Add the prepositions you found as a separate topic and save the list. Now this is where your client has to do some of the lifting. He actually has to go through the entire list and highlight or delete every keyword he does not want to be associated with.

For this example the company does not want the robot to be seen as a toy, because toy sounds to childish. The robot is meant for a mature audience (like he already told you in the first conversation). Therefore words like: robot, gadget and mechanical are fine and words like: toy or child are not. Not only could this attract the wrong crowd, they also see the chances for a lawsuit rise. Also words like: cheap, fast, big, discount, pink, purple and other words that could diminish the professionalism or quality of the duck are deleted. While words like: state-of-the-art, cool, new, fresh and wicked, black, red are fine.

Even though most clients aren’t too fond of this part (to put it mildly. Some clients even feel like they are doing your work for you…), in my opinion it’s essential. You are not your client, so let your client decide for themselves what suits them.

Research the words: Keyword formula to prioritize

Your list is a bit thinner after your clients work. Now you got a solid base to work with. So start doing your “standard” keyword research.

Synonyms

Use common sense and tools to find synonyms for your words. I can’t really help you with this since every language has its websites and tools, but I know for sure that they are out there. Add all the synonyms to the list.

Organic traffic and competition

Save this list! And keep it somewhere separate from the following steps. You will need it later. I will refer to it as the Original keyword list. After saving the list create a new Excel sheet which you will fill out during the following steps. I will refer to this document as the Keyword formula document.

Add your entire Original keyword list to the Google keyword idea generator. Use this tool to search for additional words / topics which you might have missed. Add any new found words to the list.

When you added all the words you might have missed, search for a broad match with your keywords. Remember to select the right region. You will get an overview of the competition and the organic traffic on each word.

Tip: Sort the list on name in the Google keyword generator! Or you will be sorry during the next step ;)

Download the file and place it in your Keyword formula document. When the file is complete do the following:

1. Select the whole local/organic traffic column
2. Move it to another excel sheet
3. Press CTR-F
4. Replace all the “-“ with “-1”.
5. Select the whole local/organic traffic column
6. Place it back in the original file

This will result in the following example:

Keyword match ratio

I’ve discussed before that the meaning of the word matters. But someone found a mathematical way to say this. He called it the keyword match ratio. This ratio gives you an idea about how spread out the traffic is. And the less spread out traffic is, the more relevant it will be for you.

So add two new columns called Exact match and Keyword match ratio. Use the Google keyword generator to search for all the keywords from the Original keyword list with [exact match] on. Remember to sort by name so you got them in the right order. Add this formula to the Keyword match ratio column: broad organic traffic / [exact organic traffic].

This will result in the following Keyword formula document:

Average cost per click

Next I use the Adwords generator to extract the average CPC. So upload your Original keyword list to the generator and sort by name. Add the Average CPC to your Keyword formula document resulting in:

The reason I add this to the formula is because it tells you something about the keywords. It tells you what the market is up to and if there is a big difference between the SEO and SEA market. Which can have debatable reasons, but in general it will give you a better understanding of the market you are dealing with.

This looks kind of professional now doesn’t it J. But we still got a lot to do.

ALLIN

Next up is adding the ALLINTITLE & ALLINURL for every keyword in the Original keyword list. The more sites having a specific keyword in their Title and/or URL, the more difficult it will be to rank for it. You can see these metrics as an extension of the “competition” score. To get the score simply type in ALLINTITLE:keyword & ALLINURL:keyword at the www.google.com search bar and write down the total number of results.

This will result in the following:

Tip: If you already have a website I suggest getting the current rank for each word. It can tell you something about the time it’s going to take to optimize for that specific keywords. BUT since this guide is for a new website we don’t have any ranking yet.

Grand keyword final: Adding SEO formulas

Now this data sheet on its own still isn’t useful. Because we can’t combine or compare them. What we are going to do is add an SEO score to a metric based on the number you found. The SEO score of each metric is leveled so they can be used in a comparison. So next to every metric add a column to the right called “Name SEO score” like “Competition SEO score”. Every metric will result in a score between 1 and 6. 1 being the best score and 6 the worst. Let’s take the competition as an example:

The formula for competition is the following:

Competition score:	0.00	0.01-0.20	0.20-0.50	0.50-0.75	0.75-0.90	0.90+
SEO score	1	2	3	4	5	6

Excel formula:

=IF(B3=0;1;IF(AND((B3)>=0,01;(B3)<=0,2);2;IF(AND((B3)>0,2;(B3)<=0,5);3;IF(AND((B3)>0,5;(B3)<=0,75);4;IF(AND((B3)>0,75;(B3)<=0,9);5;6)))))

Now add an SEO score to every metric. The formulas are here:

Competition

=IF(B3=0;1;IF(AND((B3)>=0,01;(B3)<=0,2);2;IF(AND((B3)>0,2;(B3)<=0,5);3;IF(AND((B3)>0,5;(B3)<=0,75);4;IF(AND((B3)>0,75;(B3)<=0,9);5;6)))))

Organic (local) traffic

=IF(D3>500;1;IF(AND((D3)>100;(D3)<=500);2;IF(AND((D3)>50;(D3)<=100);3;IF(AND((D3)>10;(D3)<=50);4;IF(AND((D3)>0;(D3)<=10);5;6)))))

Keyword match ratio

=IF(AND((F3)>1;(F3)<2);1;IF(AND((F3)>=2;(F3)<=5);2;IF(AND((F3)>5;(F3)<=10);3;IF(AND((F3)>10;(F3)<=20);4;IF(AND((F3)>20;(F3)<=40);5;6)))))

Average CPC

=IF(H3=0;1;IF(AND((H3)>0;(H3)<=0,25);2;IF(AND((H3)>0,25;(H3)<=0,5);3;IF(AND((H3)>0,5;(H3)<=1);4;IF(AND((H3)>1;(H3)<=2);5;6)))))

ALLINTITLE

=IF(J3=0;1;IF(AND((J3)>0;(J3)<=50);2;IF(AND((J3)>50;(J3)<=200);3;IF(AND((J3)>200;(J3)<=1000);4;IF(AND((J3)>1000;( J3)<=10000);5;6)))))

ALLINURL

=IF(L3=0;1;IF(AND((L3)>0;(L3)<=50);2;IF(AND((L3)>50;(L3)<=200);3;IF(AND((L3)>200;(L3)<=1000);4;IF(AND((L3)>1000;( L3)<=10000);5;6)))))

Resulting in:

WOOHOO you're almost done! Now you have all the equal SEO scores which you can use to compare notes J. So let’s take the final step and add the last column on the right.

So we just place a formula on the right adding up all the numbers right? Well not exactly. Because not all numbers should weight the same. So the formula contains a bit of a tweak:

=C3+E3+(G3*0,5)+(I3*0,25)+(K3*0,25)+(M3*0,25)

• SEO competition score weight: 1
• SEO organic traffic score weight: 1
• SEO Keyword match ratio score weight: 0,5
• SEO average CPC score weight: 0,25
• SEO ALLINTITLE score weight: 0,25
• SEO ALLINURL score weight: 0,25

And there you go! You got yourself a clean ranking order! Rank the Total SEO score from A – Z. The keyword with the lowest score is the best.

Tip: To keep you numbers neat and easy to use it’s a good idea to select all the data and make a table.

End result:

Or even better:

Pfew… It’s been a long ride but we made it J. I suggest you make an appointment with you client and relax for a while ;).

Client input

The only problem with the current SEO list is that it does not reflect the business or its revenue. So take this list to your client and discuss the outcome. Let your client name the keywords he thinks are most valuable and weight that against the SEO score so you can come to one final keyword list prioritizing the top keywords you are going to focus on.

And then you’re done… With the keyword research that is.

So now you got everything you need to make a BOOMING landing page right? You got your keywords, you got loads of questions around those keywords, you got your clients input so you're done right? RIGHT?

Nope. You got a beautiful base to start with. You just need one extra ingredient.

4. Writing style

The last remaining part of the puzzle before you can start to think about the menu and individual pages is the writing style of the website. Is your style personal or business like? Is your visitor a “you” or a “sir”. Do you refer to the company as “us” or “Company name”? Is your writing style filled with jokes, jargon or slang? No writing style is “the best”. There are different styles depending on your company, its vision, goals, etc.

Also writing style cannot be 100% written down, but you can make some ground rules. I found that the most common are:

• How you refer to the customer
• How you refer to the company
• Which topics shouldn’t be talked about (sex, drugs, alcohol and competitors for example)
• Write down key phrases like “the writing should be personal and compelling” or “the writing should be cooperate and distant”.
• Then finally write the “about us” page (since most website have this page) in the style you would like to see for the entire website. So you have a basis to work with and a document to refer to if someone has questions.

Tip: Use the “about us” page to check with your client and make sure you’re on the same page.

5. Setting up the website

Creating the menu

Finally we can get started on the actual website! We will start with determining the pages. With that we can construct the menu. Usually the menu becomes quit clear once you got all the pages you want. Just remember that you are not creating the actual page! Just the page name.

So what pages does the site need? Let’s start with the visitor segments. You know what their goal is and what questions they might have. So combine that data with the final keyword list and start creating pages. Keep in mind that generally speaking you need one page per keyword if you want to optimize for it. So try to combine the visitors' needs with your company’s SEO needs.

This is a very creative and arbitrary process so there is limited help I can provide you with. Try to segment the website so different visitor segments have different pages. This will make it easier for your visitor to find his stuff and for you to optimize for it.

Keep these guidelines in mind while you’re thinking about the different pages you want to create.

• Is it simple?
• Is it clean?
• Is the page guiding the visitor to the visitor’s and/or the company’s goal?
• Can the page be confused with another page for some reason?

When you’re done with visitor segment 1, move on to the next until you have them all. This can be a frustrating process which will probably make you rethink and rewrite all the page names several times. No sweat, that happens to everyone. Just be prepared for it ;)

Now check to see the following:

• Is everything the visitor wants on the website?
• Do the top X keywords from your final keyword list have their own page?
• Can you spread out the other keywords among the pages so they can be optimized?
• Is everything the company wants to show on the website?

So now you have all your pages, creating the menu is relatively easy. Mostly different visitor segments want different kind of information and you can use this to create the menu of the website. When you’re creating the menu the most important part is that you don’t confuse the visitor by naming things badly. For example;

If I’m looking for a color on a website the menu: Colors would be perfect. If the menu had the menu items: Primary colors – secondary colors that would be more clear…or more confusing. It depends on your visitor's knowledge. Does your visitor know what primary colors are? What if the menu is: Red ish colors – blue ish colors – yellow ish colors is that better or worse? For someone looking for purple it’s probably not so great. But then again visitors looking for red will hug you for this.

If you need more help: A piece of this blog is about structuring a website.

When you think you hit the menu jackpot run a simple UX test. Create the menu and sub-menu on little pieces of paper. Invite 5-8 people who have never heard of your website or company and interview them individually. Who they are isn’t that important. Ask friends, family, coworkers, random people, students. Whoever wants to volunteer ;)

Lay down the top menu on a table and ask them:

• When you see the menu, what kind of company do you think is behind the website and why?
• What do you think the main goal of the website is and why?
• What products/services do you think the company provides and why?
• What would you expect to find behind the each menu item and/or sub-menu item and why?
• If you were looking to reach the following goal where would you look and why? (use the goals your visitor segments have)

When they answered these questions lay down the sub-menu items below each main menu item and ask them the same questions again.

I can promise you it will be an eye opener! Use this information to improve the menu. Repeat the test after improving if you got time.

Tip: Record the tests!

Tip: Make sure this little test is informal. People tend to feel a bit pressured and dumb when they can’t provide you with the answer they think you want to hear. Make sure they are comfortable and tell them that any flaw or confusing is YOUR mistake and not theirs. Even better, explain to them that the better and harder the critique at this stage is, the better you can do your job. So go nuts and burn it to the ground!

You can do a lot more tests when the actual website pages are done. But that’s mainly a UX story. So I will keep that for another day ;)

So now you have

• Well thought out website pages
• Great menu structure
• Visitor segments including motivations,
• A prioritized keyword list
• Loads of questions your visitors might ask.

If you can't make a BOOMING website with all this information than I am at a loss...

I hope this guide has helped you in some way. If you have anything to add, questions, remarks please leave them in the comments below or send me a direct message.

6. Tools / formulas /references used

Helpful stuff for coming up with questions

A very helpful model to help you is the buying process model. There are a number of models you can use and websites reporting on them. It’s too deep to go into them all, but here are some: The 5-step program - 5 steps on different blog- AIDA – More than 5 steps

Another list that may help you come up with questions is:

• Who
• What
• Where
• When
• Why
• What
• What for?
• With what?
• Which
• How
• How many
• What time?
• Who does
• Who can
• What if
• What can
• Where to go
• When is
• What should you consider when deciding whether
• How does
• What must be
• What should be
• When to use
• Can I
• Do I
• May I
• Will I
• Should I

Subjects that you can think of are:

• Product features / advantages
• Product specifications
• Policy
• Guarantees
• Return policy
• Company information
• Accountability
• Privacy
• Integration with other stuff
• Partnership
• Customer service
• Cost
• Expire date
• General industry questions
• Payment
• Checklists
• Conditions
• Safety
• Insurance
• How-it-works step-by-step
• Upcoming changes
• Suppliers
• Customers
• Patents

Read emails from previous customers

Use recorded phone conversations

Any other kind of communication with the customer that is documented

Google suggestions

Ubersuggest

Websites

Using Personas to Boost Online Marketing and SEO

Segment landing pages

The wheel of persuasion

Motivation @ wikipedia

12 techniques

VKStudios 26 blog posts about persuasion

Saps

meaning of the word matters

keyword match ratio

Here is another blog about structuring a website.

Tools

Google keyword idea generator

Books

Temperaments

Movies

What motivates us (youtube)

Formulas

Keyword match ratio

broad organic traffic / [exact organic traffic].

SEO scores:

Competition
=IF(B3=0;1;IF(AND((B3)>=0,01;(B3)<=0,2);2;IF(AND((B3)>0,2;(B3)<=0,5);3;IF(AND((B3)>0,5;(B3)<=0,75);4;IF(AND((B3)>0,75;(B3)<=0,9);5;6)))))

Organic (local) traffic
=IF(D3>500;1;IF(AND((D3)>100;(D3)<=500);2;IF(AND((D3)>50;(D3)<=100);3;IF(AND((D3)>10;(D3)<=50);4;IF(AND((D3)>0;(D3)<=10);5;6)))))

Keyword match ratio
=IF(AND((F3)>1;(F3)<2);1;IF(AND((F3)>=2;(F3)<=5);2;IF(AND((F3)>5;(F3)<=10);3;IF(AND((F3)>10;(F3)<=20);4;IF(AND((F3)>20;(F3)<=40);5;6)))))

Average CPC
=IF(H3=0;1;IF(AND((H3)>0;(H3)<=0,25);2;IF(AND((H3)>0,25;(H3)<=0,5);3;IF(AND((H3)>0,5;(H3)<=1);4;IF(AND((H3)>1;(H3)<=2);5;6)))))

ALLINTITLE
=IF(J3=0;1;IF(AND((J3)>0;(J3)<=50);2;IF(AND((J3)>50;(J3)<=200);3;IF(AND((J3)>200;(J3)<=1000);4;IF(AND((J3)>1000;( J3)<=10000);5;6)))))

ALLINURL
=IF(L3=0;1;IF(AND((L3)>0;(L3)<=50);2;IF(AND((L3)>50;(L3)<=200);3;IF(AND((L3)>200;(L3)<=1000);4;IF(AND((L3)>1000;( L3)<=10000);5;6)))))

Final SEO score
=C3+E3+(G3*0,5)+(I3*0,25)+(K3*0,25)+(M3*0,25)