How to Use Customer Journey Maps to Improve Your SEO Strategy

Not all traffic is created equally. Lots of websites get vanity traffic—clicks that lead to absolutely nothing. 

In theory, getting more traffic should be good news for any website. But if you’re not getting more conversions or sales, then your SEO strategy is misaligned. 

Incorporating customer journey maps into your SEO strategy solves these problems. You’ll end up with highly targeted traffic from people who have a chance at converting.

So take a step back for a second and keep an open mind. I’m not going to try to flip your entire SEO strategy upside down. Instead, I’ll show you small tweaks can help you win.

The Connection Between Customer Journeys and SEO

Customer journey mapping is all about visualizing how people interact with your brand across multiple touchpoints. It starts with the initial awareness and continues through post-purchase engagement, covering everything in between.

These maps track the entire customer experience—highlighting pain points, opportunities, and decision factors at every stage (awareness, consideration, decision). 

Traditional SEO strategies often focus exclusively on keywords and rankings without considering where customers are in their journey. This is a big problem.

By prioritizing search volume over user intent, you’ll end up with vanity traffic—impressive search numbers that fail to generate any meaningful business results. 

That’s why modern SEOs need to consider the buyer’s journey when planning and implementing SEO strategies. Understanding this connection and taking a journey-focused SEO approach will ultimately lead to a better ROI on your SEO investments. 

Aligning Search Intent With Journey Stages: The Backbone of Winning SEO

Search intent is the foundation of effective SEO strategies, particularly when you can align intent with journey mapping.

There are four primary types of search intent:

• Informational: Seeking knowledge or answers (“how to improve website speed”)
• Navigational: Looking for a specific website, brand, or page (“Facebook login”)
• Commercial: Researching products before making a decision (“best CRM software comparison”)
• Transactional: Ready to complete an action or purchase (“buy organic coffee online”)

Each search intent corresponds to different stages of the customer journey.

Informational searches typically align with awareness stages. Commercial searches align with the consideration stage, and transactional queries can be mapped to the decision stage. 

It’s worth noting that navigational searches can happen throughout the entire journey, but they typically indicate that the user is familiar with your brand.

Search behavior is actually fairly predictable. It evolves logically as users make their way through a journey with your brand. 

They might start with a search like “what is content marketing” (awareness) and then move to “content marketing platforms comparison” (consideration) and end with “Semrush pricing plans” (decision). 

It’s not always this straightforward and linear. But understanding this evolution helps you create content that answers the right questions at the right time. 

For example, you might have high bounce rates on your product pages coming from informational queries. This could tell you that you need to bridge the gap between awareness and decision with another piece of content. Someone searching for basic information isn’t necessarily ready to buy or sign up for a trial. 

You can adjust your keyword strategy here as well. Tools like Ahrefs and Semrush can identify gaps in your content strategy across different types of search intent.

I’m not telling you to abandon your current SEO approach altogether. You just need to refine it and account for what customers are looking for at each stage. 

Mapping Keywords to Journey Touchpoints

Now we can take things one step further. Once you understand the need to align search intent with each stage of the customer journey, you can focus on your touchpoints—mapping keywords to each one.

You’ll want to create a keyword matrix here that has specific search terms mapped to every interaction. Spreadsheets work really well for this. Just list your touchpoints on one axis and journey stages on the other, then you can put keywords in the cells that correspond to specific touches and stages.

For example, here are some common touch points throughout a buyer’s journey listed sequentially: 

• Initial discovery through a search engine
• First-time website visit
• Blog engagement
• Newsletter signup
• Product page engagement
• Cart interaction
• Connection with customer support
• Post-purchase follow-up

There are some slight nuances and industry-specific touchpoints that vary depending on your business type. For example, ecommerce sites may focus on product discovery and cart abandonment while B2B SaaS companies will prioritize demo requests and whitepaper downloads. 

For SEO, content gaps at critical touchpoints are often the most valuable opportunities. 

You should be prioritizing touches based on conversion impact. What searches will lead to touches that actually move the needle?

Creating SEO-Friendly Content That Resonates at Each Stage of the Customer Journey

Your content creation process becomes much more strategic when it’s aligned with specific customer journey stages. Each stage demands a different format and approach so users can be engaged based on their current needs.

For the awareness stage, focus on educational content that answers questions and addresses pain points without any hard sales or pitches. 

• How-articles
• Comprehensive guides
• Educational blogs explaining key terms or concepts
• Industry research and trends
• Infographics and informational videos

The consideration stage is a bit different, and requires you to focus on content that helps users evaluate their options and narrow down choices.

• Comparison posts between brands and products
• Case studies
• Expert interviews
• Product or service overviews
• Webinars

At the decision stage, your content can be a bit more pushy and initiate the final purchase. Do whatever you can help them overcome objections and make the user feel right about their decision.

• Product pages with clear value props
• Customer testimonials and success stories
• Detailed pricing pages
• Free trials and demos
• Implementation guides and onboarding resources

By tailoring content to each journey stage, you give users exactly what they need when they need it most. 

Someone in the awareness stage shouldn’t be overwhelmed by technical specifications and pricing tables. They might land on your content organically, but they’ll likely bounce and find another resource that better addresses their questions.

On the flip side, a decision-ready prospect doesn’t shouldn’t be landing on a blog post with the first section, “What is CRM Software?” They should be on a product-specific landing page or demo form.

Building Trust Signals Throughout the Customer Journey

If you’ve been following my blogs and podcasts for a while, you know how much I believe in authority marketing. Taking this into consideration as you’re creating customer journey maps for SEO will help you beat your competitors.

Why? Authority builds trust.

If you can build trust throughout the customer journey, it drastically increases your chances of converting.

Google’s algorithms continue to prioritize this as well. So not only will your customers feel more confident purchasing from you, but they’ll also have an easier time finding you in the SERPs.

Technical SEO is important here, too. Everything from site speed to security to mobile optimization and beyond. Beyond that, you also need to focus on off-page signals like reviews, backlinks, and social proof.

Trust signals impact searches differently at every stage. 

For example, an authoritative backlink could help boost your credibility in the awareness stage. But at the decision stage, a security badge and money-back guarantee are more important for getting conversions (those buyers won’t care about your backlinks here).

Building trust is a cumulative process and can’t be done overnight. But small signals add up over time, and if you include trust signals at every stage, you’ll naturally create a path that leads to conversions. 

Final Thoughts

Customer journey mapping can be a game-changer for your SEO strategy.

Traffic alone isn’t enough to pay the bills. You need quality traffic that actually converts.

To win here, you need to acknowledge and understand how different users need different types of content at each stage of their journey—and their search intent will align with what they’re looking for. 

If you’re taking a one-size-fits-all approach, you’ll just end up creating more friction in your buying process. Traffic might spike, but conversions will plateau or likely drop.