It's time to design your web site. I want everyone to be my customer, you say. I want to be all things to all people, you say. Sound familiar? Hopefully not, because to be all things to all people means to be an indistinguishable pile of mush that will find its way to the bottom of the search engine results, and be confusing and uninspiring to users.

Okay, so to counteract the mush and make magic, you've got to put a stake in the ground. Period. You've got to figure out for whom you're designing your web site. This is called "Defining Your Target Audience," and it is an essential part of good search engine optimization. Why? Because good SEO is all about putting the focus on your site visitors. In order to do so, you need to give them good, quality content, which in turn will attract good, quality, relevant sites to link to yours, therefore ushering in a new group of potential customers. And provide good content and attract quality links, you need to know who your customers are and what they want.

Any English teacher worth her salt will tell you that when writing anything, there are two key concerns. First is purpose: what do I want my audience to think, do or believe. Second is audience: who, exactly, is it that I want to think, do, and believe these things.

It comes down to this: let's say you have a website where you sell upscale items such as Godiva Chocolates and fancy fountain pens. To market such products to teeny-boppers and teenagers is probably not going to be real effective, so therefore, a "hip" approach for your web strategy is not what you need. A little research shows you that your typical customer has an annual income of over $100,000, has a graduate degree, owns 2 or more homes, and is over 45 years old. So there you go, now you have enough information to design a strategy and a website to target that market segment.

How do you go about defining your target audience?

You gather data. If you already have a web site, invite visitors to fill out a form in exchange for a free gift. The gift could be a downloadable, e-book, or a gift certificate for your products. If you have a database of email addresses, send out a survey, and again offer the free gift as an incentive for them to complete and send it back.

What data should you gather? Get as much of the following information as you can:

• Age
• Male or female
• Geographic location
• Income
• Profession/type of work
• Marital status
• Education
• Attitude toward your product/service category
• Attitude your product/service
• Interests/hobbies

What do I do with this data? Now that you have this information, you are prepared to design and produce an effective, targeted website and accompanying marketing program, be it email, telephone, or direct mail. First, write down your goal: What do I want my audience to think, do or believe after or while visiting my website. Second, write down your objective: Why do I want them to think, do or believe it? Third, look at your demographic data and place it alongside your goal and objective. The ideas for your web site marketing plan should start flowing.

Mary Anne Donovan

Mary Anne Donovan is both a scholar and a practitioner, a balance that "gives me the best of both worlds: the theory behind digital communications and the hands-on experience to know what really works and what doesn't." She is in her tenth year as a professor of technical writing and business communications at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, NY, while at the same time serves as Vice President and Director of U.S. Operations for SEO Literacy Consultants, Inc., a search engine optimization consulting and training company. Mary Anne has worked with computers since they first came out of the closet and into more general application, starting with computerized quality control systems for Kodak photographic and printing processes and now with the fine points of SEO theory and application.