Beyond SEO – Who ARE These People?

The strategy behind SEO is that you optimize your web site and other’s web sites to that the search engines put your site at the top of the search engine results pages. Being at the top of the page means that more people will probably click through to your site.

That’s all well and good, but technically, you don’t really care about getting people to come to your web site. You really care about getting people to buy your stuff.

The Goodyear blimp in Los Angeles is based a few miles from where I live. We see it all the time. On today’s bike ride, it came out from over the city and turned South to cruise down the coast. It flew almost over my head before I could stop and get a camera out.

On sunny days, they fly airplanes over the water, parallel to the beach, with big banners flying behind them, advertising beer or some event. They fly up and down while surfers surf and sunbathers sunbathe, uninterested in them.

They blast out their message to everyone within sight. Does everyone run out and buy Goodyear tires? or buy Coors Lite? If they’re lucky, they get a small percentage of sales.

Is that what you are doing? Are you optimized for a keyword that brings a lot of people, but not the people that want to buy your products?

SEO traffic is great, but you should target people who love your products. Aim for the fans, not for the crowds. Work on relationships, not on quantity. It’s better to have people who are interested and stick around and read your stuff than the people who are clicking through and bouncing out within 8 seconds.

A practical step step to do that is to figure out who is coming to your site now. Where do they come from? What are they looking for? Who stays around? Who bounces quickly?

Google Analytics has a few ways to dig a little more information out of all that data. There’s a button named “Advanced Segments” above the chart on the main stats page. If you click on that, you can look at segments of the traffic, like new visitors or sources. In the right hand sidebar, there’s a link to “Custom Reports”.

Try to find out who these people are that come to your site and why they are coming there. Look at keywords. They might not be what you expect.

Those tools will give you hours of fun, sorting through data.

When you think you have a better idea of who all these people are, you can focus your site on giving them what they want. Then maybe, you can make a few more sales.