The very first thing that any search engine optimisation company must do is understand where the traffic is. No project should ever start without a comprehensive analysis of the target market. That's why our seventh tip is:

7. Understand your Audience

There are tools available which can help. Here is one from Overture.

www.overture.co.uk

The search engines all collect and maintain statastics every time a search phrase is entered; mainly for the purpose of helping advertisement buyers target their pay-per-click campaigns. But the same data is very useful for targeting new business when kicking off a natural search engine optimisation project.

There is no value in getting number one rankings for a search term that no one ever enters into a search engine, so the trick is to find a series of highly searched keywords that are relevant to your product and then optimise them.

Some key considerations are:

Geography – where are the customers likely to come from? What stage are we competing on, local, regional, national, international?

Affluence - what type of customer are we looking for? Business people or consumers? It affects which search engines we target.

Quick wins - are some of the relevant keywords easier to compete in than others?

A lot of research goes into establishing these factors. Too often you see sites where the search engine optimisation is patchy and actually targeting the wrong audience.

The truly wonderful thing about search engine optimisation is that, unlike any other marketing activity, it's completely quantifiable. Very specific niches can be targeted with ease.  And as usual, it's all about being smarter than the next guy when you do it.

So the message here is know your audience. Know what they are typing in. Know where they are and which search engines they use. Know what other sites they are likely to see. Know which relevant keywords are the easiest to target, and use search engine optimisation specialists to make sure you keep on top of your potential customer base.