By John Alexander

Give this your full attention because once you are on to this, you may experience a whole new view of SEO through the eyes of the visiting audience. Recently, someone told me about their objective of selling a certain product. I asked them who it was, that might buy such a product. They told me that it might be a certain sports fans. Then they explained the current strategies they employed. What I notice, is that most of our focus is ALWAYS on our service or what our product is and then our strategy is usually based on thinking up related keywords. While this can help bring you some traffic, it's still only a fraction of the benefit which can be realized.

For example, instead of just gearing up for a bunch of generalized sports interests, you might do your Wordtracker research and come up with a very focused strategy based on people's behavior. Hmmm...for example, if you were selling a shirt to an audience of sports lovers, how many people are aware that there is an audience of "Hockey fans" that appear to like "poetry" related to hockey?

Is it safe to say that all hockey poetry readers are lovers of the sport?

Well probably, but then how do you really know if an idea like this would work?

This is the easy part. Simply put together a page and test it out. Find out if it brings you any increase. Okay let's go back to the beginning and start over.

Here's what most people do wrong:

They hold their product or a service they are trying to sell in their hand and think to themselves....How can I promote this thing on the web?

They scan for "related keywords" and struggle to come up with something in "high demand" that relates to what they happen to hold in their hand (their product or service).

Is this not true? How many people will build a site selling a product or service and then think about researching keywords and optimization as a second step. We see it all the time. Some people never do get to the step of looking for traffic until after their Web site is all built. This does not mean that we should not search for related keywords and there are benefits of optimizing by taking a standard approach.

But here's what else you might do as an alternative:

Don't start by building a Web site - start by researching peoples behavior.

Don't hold a product in your hand and wonder how to attract an audience to it.

Try the exact opposite approach. Instead of choosing a product and then hunting to see if there is a market for it, try hunting for a unique market first, by examining people's behavior, then feed a "much needed" product into that marketplace which you have proven there is a demand for.

Never start by randomly guessing at what people MIGHT be doing. Things are too competitive these days for guess work.

Learn how to study and analyze what people actually want and then build that component (what you know will draw them) right into the Web site. No need for tricks or sneaky stuff. Give them the higher value useful content that they are really seeking.

Compare it to the real world. Most people who are investing in a business selling a new product are certainly going to research the need for the product. Why would they spend a year developing some new product and then just "hope" that people will want to buy it. It's far better to know what people want and then offer them what you know they want, right?

So why should it be any different for a web site? It's not any different at all, but many people just don't understand the importance of taking these steps up front.

5 Tips to help you identify visitor behavior:
1. Zero in on who the target audience is.

Start with your client and ask plenty of questions about who their target audience is. Try asking your client questions that make then dig in and think about their own customer behavior.

Ask questions like:

Who is your ideal customer?

What type of business do you LIKE to get?

What type of business is most profitable for you?

Can you help me understand what is IMPORTANT to your customers?

Why do your customers buy from YOU instead of your competitor?

What have you noticed in the way of recent sales trends in sales?

Now when you ask these types of questions, listen carefully because your client may just reveal some great information which you can further research using a tool like Wordtracker.

2. Learn as much as you can about the marketplace

Every marketplace is completely different so you need to really look for any additional ways to study it. The point is to try and see things and understand things from the side of the customer. Again, I love to extract information from my client because they usually really do know their own business best and often, they know it better than they think!

I like to ask more questions of the client such as:

Do your customers face any special challenges?

What is it that your customers say they wish they could find online, that they can't?

Do you have any inside information that your customers could really profit from?

Sometimes you may ask your client to actually contact a few customers and help collect this type of information.

3. This can be a great time to do a poll

Would your client be able to conduct a poll to determine customer concerns and or challenges and just collect feedback. There are lots of online polling services which allow you to collect this information.

eg. http://www.freepolls.com/

eg. http://www.pulsepoll.com/

4. Collect keywords from your client (but don't guess at them.)

Ask your client for a list of 30 to 50 single keywords. These are not words for their keyword Meta tag they are keywords to help you do your research in the "comprehensive search" feature of Wordtracker. Enter your singular terms one at a time or add the whole list. Use the "comprehensive search" feature to do the thinking for you and extract any of the best related phrases and sort them in order.

Here is an e-guide where I explain exactly how it's done.

Give your full attention to these results because you'll often have a brainstorm as you consider the usage of these terms. It'll be like a light coming on, and suddenly you'll realize "why people are using that certain phrase". You'll also identify any related hot topics. This is great stuff each time it happens.

Here are a whole selection of Wordtracker Tips and tutorials and a free e-book you can read up on.

Also be sure to collect Wordtracker's Top 1000 report (in the members area) for ideas that might be good to run through comprehensive search (this often leads to a whole range of great ideas related to one the or topic).

5. Stay closely in touch with your client to identify more behaviors after the promotion launch:

Your customer will be happy to share stories, tell you of need behavioral trends at times EVEN before you pick up on them! The reason is that your client is not just analyzing statistics and looking at reports. They see business from a first-hand perspective and it is essential to stay in touch with them regularly. They may notice a certain trend and with their help, you'll discover other whole new trends within wordtracker, long before other even think about it.