Professional and affordable web site design packages, web
site search engine optimization services, and
web site
maintenance programs for small, growing businesses!
Golden Webs is an innovative website design company based in
Columbus / Westerville, Ohio
800-614-4523
Identifying Your Website's Target Audience
Many times, websites are created without any thought given to exactly
who the website is for and how (or even if) the website reached the
intended audience. Knowing your audience may just be the most important
consideration in website design and search engine optimization.
When was the last time you visited a website and you either a) wondered
who the website was intended for or b) could not understand what the
website was talking about (as in, the words used within the site)?
It may or may not have ever happened to you, but you will run across a
website like this, in time.
Website visitors can be very forgiving when visiting a website – they
fill in the blanks where content may be missing or they just skip over
the words which are foreign to them, hoping to still make sense out of
the web content. Search engine “bots,” however, may not be so
forgiving. Either the particular website or web page makes sense
to them or it does not and, many times, the website simply does not get
the job done.
Take a landscape company website, for example. The site may focus
on the term “landscape design/build company,” but as a homeowner, you
would never search for that term. Rather, you would enter
something like “landscape trees” or “install home landscape.” In
this instance, the two of you are speaking two different languages and
are not connecting at all.
As you think about content for your website, consider two things.
First, who is your target audience and second, are you speaking their
language? It is quite possible for a website to have more than one
target audience. For example, a website can target customers,
wholesalers, and distributors. However, this web content needs to
be on separate pages and be specific to each targeted audience.
You need to ensure that the language you use on the web page is the
language a web searcher will use when looking for a product or service
you may offer.
Search engine optimization is all about using the correct words in your
content and it is critically important to feed your search bots the
ideal words your target audience will use when conducting a web search.
There are a variety of tools you can use to see exactly what web
searchers are entering when using search engines, some of which are
quite affordable. These tools will be covered in greater detail in
a separate article.
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About the Author. Bill Golden, founder of Golden Web Design Services,
has grown up with technology since the early 1980s. As the first
“PC Guru” for a US Midwest Fortune 500 company, he directed a variety of
corporate development initiatives over a 17 year period. Bill then
managed a technical training company before starting his own consulting
practice in 2001, specializing in website development, marketing, and
search engine optimization. If you are interested in learning more
about how Bill can help improve your website rankings, you can reach him
at http://www.goldenwebs.biz.
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