The Three Big Questions Before SEO and PPC

Before you even START thinking about implementing SEO or PPC, there are three hugely important questions you must ask yourself:

1. What do you want to be found for?

2. What are people actually searching for?

3. What do you want to happen when they find you?

So, while you may want to be found for some proprietary term you have for yourself like "experiential retention" what people are really searching for are terms like "customer service experts" or "effective loyalty programs". You cannot be obtuse when it comes to SEO or choosing your keywords for PPC.

Then, if you want people to actually do something once they do find you, send them to the right page. Don't send someone who click on an ad about rare vinyl records to a home page that's about your music store - send them to the vinyl records page. Don't send a person looking for diamond stud earrings to a page with a big picture of pearls. If you want them to buy something, send them there.

I've had SEO clients who have taken top search terms out of copy because they don't like the sound of them, or think they're too mundane. Problem is, those are the terms people are searching for, and if they're not in the copy, I can't just put them in the tags, so the search engines don't find them on their site, and guess what - they don't get found.

It seems simple, but it's one of the main mistakes I've seen. Don't make it.