When I conduct Search Engine Optimization (SEO) audits for my clients, many go into the process fairly satisfied with their situation if their Web site is already ranking well on search sites when their own name is used as the search keyword. This puts me in the position of having to gently debunk for my client the myth that ranking well for your own name means much of anything.

Don’t get me wrong: it’s better to rank #1 for your own company name on Google or Yahoo! than the alternative. However, that is only about 1/10th the battle! If you think about it, prospects and customers who already know your name will have little or no trouble finding you on the Web. Therefore, they are not the people whom you should be targeting with your SEO campaign.

Rather, what you want is to try to get the attention of the people who have a defined (or even a vague) sense that they need products or services such as those that you are offering. In this context, it is clear that your SEO campaign should focus on optimizing your site (and the content on other sites that backlink to your site) with keywords that represent what someone would naturally type into their favorite search site as a search term when looking for what it is that you offer.

Of course, there are other criteria for choosing good keywords to target in your SEO efforts. For example, you do not want to target keywords that result in an inordinate number of competing search results (e.g., 5,000,000 results). But, that is a story for another day!