The key to creating content that's good for SEO (search engine optimization) is creating content that your audience finds:

• Helpful
• Informative
• Interesting

If your target audience finds your articles, blog posts, website copy, and product descriptions valuable, then your content is more likely to rank higher in search engine results.  Therefore, you need to know your target market well, so that you can create effective content that meets their needs.

Define your audience

Every successful marketing campaign begins with defining a target market.

For example, if you are in the health and wellness niche, your audience might be patients, health care professionals, or medical researchers.  If your niche is education, then your audience might be parents, students, or even educators.

Whether you are writing an information article, friendly blog post, or sales copy, you need to know for whom your content is intended.  Think about your brand's products or services.  Then think about a target market that might be served well by them.

Gather information about your target market

Once you know who your audience is, you need to learn as much as you can about them by conducting good market research.

Here are some ways to conduct simple, yet effective market research on your target audience:

• Posting questions on industry-related forums, Q&A (question-and-answer) sites, and social media platforms
• Talk to your customer service department
• Ask for customer feedback
• Interview industry experts for their insights

Of course, you can also hire a market research firm to gather in-depth information on your audience.

List the major characteristics of your audience

After learning about your target market, you should be able to identify their major characteristics. Here are some examples:

• Demographics (age, income, education, etc)
• Cultural backgrounds
• Important values
• Consumer habits
• Social environments
• Geographic regions

These characteristics can help you craft and implement more effective marketing campaigns to which your audience will be able to relate.

Gather your audience's biggest questions related to your niche

Creating content that your target market will find valuable largely depends on your ability to create content that answers their biggest questions.  In fact, most search engine queries tend to be written as questions by users. For instance, "what are some ways to get out of debt quickly?"

That's why content that ranks high in terms of good SEO is often written to provide an answer to a question that users are searching for online.  Therefore, you need to gather your audience's biggest questions if you want to create content that will be SEO-friendly to search engines and valuable to your target market.

Industry-related forums and Q&A sites can be a great place to find user questions related to your niche.  You can also use the Google Keyword Planner to see what kind of information your audience is searching for online.

Use the information about your target market to create content for them

By now you should have a fairly in-depth understanding of who your target audience is, as well as their needs, and how you can meet those needs. You are ready to craft SEO-friendly articles, blog posts, and product descriptions that are aimed at your audience.  The questions that you gathered in the previous step can make great topics to write about since your audience is searching for information on those topics.

In addition to answering their biggest questions, your content should include the same key phrases and quotes that your target market uses to make it as relatable as possible.

In short, understanding your target market starts with knowing who your target market is.  Once you have your audience in mind, you need to learn as much as you can about them.  Figure out their major characteristics.  Find out what they are searching for online.  Then, use all of that information to create good content that meets their needs by answering their biggest questions related to your niche.