The very first step in preparing search optimization for your site is to understand your business.
You know your business better than a search engine or a search professional. You need to target your search efforts in order to support your business otherwise you will simply waste your money building search for a product or service you don’t may not offer!
Identify the demographics of your customers. By answering some of the following questions you will get closer to knowing who you are selling to:
- Are they businesses or consumers?
- Are they predominantly male or female?
- What is their household or total sales (I the case of businesses) income?
While always important to identify where your customer is in traditional marketing, it is even more important for Internet marketing because the default geographic assumption for websites is “The World”
- Where are they located?
- Are your products and services available worldwide?
- If not, specifically where are they available? Define if it is within a country, a state or province, city, or defined neighborhood.
Google offers a free tool that can help you define your demographics based on website data they have available. It is primarily to help advertisers choose what sites they wish to advertise on but you can still use the data.
This is not to replace your understanding of your consumers but to augment your understanding. Just put your website in the search field: Google Ad Planner.
