People say they want to be on page one on Google. That’s a reasonable request, but it’s missing a step.

The first question should always be “On page one for what key search phrases?”.

To properly optimise a website you need to know the target key phrases. Do you have a plan of attack when it comes to optimising your website?

There are some questions to ask that might help you.

Q: Are you looking for ‘new’ clients who are randomly searching the web for your service? For many business people this isn’t the case. For many of us the website is there to support existing clients, and to support specific marketing or referral clients. Someone is referred to you, they check you out more online to see your product or service, and your team. To see how credible you are before making the next step. In this case the answer is simple. You really need to make sure you rank well for your company name. You should also try to rank well for the owners name, or key staff. There isn’t space here, but to do this read the SEO Guide we gave you at training, or any of the Search Engine Optimisation blog articles and videos we provide. Everyone should at least optimise for their company name, it’s just sensible.

Q: How broad is your target market online. We typically don’t focus on Key Search Words. You will hear us talk a lot more about Key Search Phrases. The reasoning is as follows. Say you decide to optimise your website for one word, for instance ‘builder’. For a start common single words are usually very competitive so you are going to struggle to get on page one anyway. Secondly it is very broad. You would essentially be fishing for anyone searching the word ‘builder’ and that could include searching for ‘train to be a builder’ ‘website builder’ ‘boat builder’ ‘building courses’. You might get large amounts of traffic, but it won’t be target market. This is just like the SEO specialist email offers that arrive in your mailbox everyday, making claims about huge traffic increases. What they don’t tell you is that most of it is useless traffic.

Q: How narrow is your online target market? Let’s say you do one thing and you know who you want to reach. Optimise your website for something more specific and something longer. For instance ‘house and land packages’ will pick up very particular people looking for a very particular thing. Your search traffic may be lower, but it will be better targeted.

Q: What is your target market searching for? There are Google tools to see what is being searched across the web. You can start typing a search phrase into the Google search engine and the suggestions that appear in the drop down indicate most common searches. However this is internet-wide. This doesn’t tell you about your target market. The key to the answers above being effective, is matching them up with actual phrases being searched by potential clients. We all tend to live in our own industry jargon bubbles, but get out there and talk to some clients. If they call it a ‘sandwich board’, or if they think of you as a ‘computer technician’, then those are the phrases you need to optimise for.