SEO : Profiling The Visitor

Before we even begin the process of optimizing a website, we must be sure of what keywords we are targeting, ie. what our prospective customer is typing into search engines in order to find the product/service/information that we supply. We want to fish in that stream.

It sounds easy, but the most common SEO mistake is not understanding what keywords customers actually type.

'Become' the Customer

The golden rule is put yourself in the mindset of the person doing the searching. If you can do this effectively then you are half way to search engine success.

Who is he/she...? What do they require...? Where is he/she located...? When or how often to they need our product/service...? How do they use our product/service, and How much can they afford...? Why are they in need of [product/service]...?

Fleshing out answers to these questions will provide ideas on how to write & structure our website content, and help us define our list of keywords.

Profile document

Write down your thoughts / discussion, then summarize into a word doc profiling your customer under the 'who/what/when/where/how' headings.

Include the date in the document, as this information will prove invaluable in future strategic / promotion reviews.

	Do... be thorough - get this bit wrong and you will never get the top of the search engines ask other people's opinions: "if you were in need of ... what would you search for?" create the profile document - no short cuts!
	Don't... be judgmental - all keywords are good, just some are better than others. Prune and order the list later once you've got a good selection of at least 10 keywords/phrases.