The prospective clients, the group of people that you want to reach through your website, are your target audience.
Who is your target audience ?
Depending on the topic of your website, your target audience could be
- world wide, or for a certain area of a specific city,
- for people of any age, or of a determined age group,
- for e-commerce, or for sharing information about a hobby or common interest, etc.
How will your target audience find your website ?
Consider the topic you selected for your website, then define what the people in your target audience would search the Internet for in order to find your website. Make a list of words and short phrases you think your target audience would use to search for your website.
Google Trends can help your website.
Here is where it would be helpful to have some idea what words and short phrases your target audience would use to search for your website, if you could just ask them. Google features Google Trends (www.Google.com/trends), which you can use to determine how many people search for a word or short phrase. Google Trends even allows you to compare words and short phrases (from the list that you made) to see which ones more people are searching for. If your website is primarily for local interest, you can refine your Google Trends response for a country and city.
Less searched words and phrases.
- What if some of the words and short phrases you know significantly help describe your website don’t appear to be as popular on Google Trends ?
- What if some of your words or short phrases haven’t been searched for enough for Google Trends to have any data to respond to your request ?
Your list should include some more popular words and short phrases, to increase the probability of your website being found by your target audience. But you can also include words and short phrases on your website that you know significantly help describe your website even if they don’t appear to be as popular on Google Trends. If a member of your target audience is as familiar with the topic of your website as you are, they may search for that same word or phrase, and that could help them find your website
For example, looking at words for a client’s website, American Chiropractic and Rehabilitation,
we compared:
- chiropractor
- chiropractic massage
- chiropractic adjustment
and Google trends showed us that chiropractor is more frequently searched for. We may still use the less frequently searched phrases in the content (text on) the website.
