SEO TIP Know Your Audience

Search engine optimization begins with knowing your audience.

Understanding your audience may seem like an obvious statement. If you sell pickles, you know your audience enjoys pickles. However, knowing your audience goes deeper than simply knowing that what you sell or what you have to say, is important to them.

Recently I have been asked to analyze two different websites. Both of these websites sells something people love to buy. However, there are several problems that need to be addressed. Exploring how to optimize their site for search engine traffic will help to weed out the problems they need to address.

Let's consider the first site, we'll justs call it Site A. Site A is about a delicious food that people enjoy as a snack. However, the first thing you see when you get to their website is not about their product, but rather a totally different subject, product distribution.

There is nothing wrong with inviting people to join them in distributing their product. What is needed is a separate section of their site, or a separate site altogether, where people can learn about becoming a vendor or distributor.

Poor search engine optimization will drive the wrong audience to your site. It will also leave the search engines clueless as to what your site is about. Knowing good the good bad and ugly parts of this search engine optimization puzzle will help you to avoid poor SEO.

What people are typing into the search engines for site A is something like this:
Cranberry Gum Drops, and although site A sells this product, the main theme of their site seems to be how to become a distributor for their product.

If I was looking to buy the product and was unable to actually find it on the website, I think I'd be a little frustrated. It goes without saying that you don't want to frustrate your customers.

What's the solution? Site A needs to use keywords on their site that target the audience they want coming to visit their site. They are looking for distributors, not thirsty consumers. So the keywords they need to use would target people seeking a distributorship, not people wanting to eat their product.

To be continued...