(Be sure to read Part A below before reading this).

Okay, so what’s the best way to think about these different types of traffic that could potentially visit your site?

Here is how to prioritize your traffic in terms of capturing them (with SEO) and converting them (with good site design).

Top Priority: Type III: people who want a service like yours but who don’t know you exist

These folks should be your primary targets. Think about it this way: you want to conduct your SEO campaign (and design your site to capture, inform, impress and incite to respond to your call to action) for those people who aren’t yet aware you even exist on the planet but who are already motivated to seek a service or product like yours. Make your site all about these folks. The biggest mistake webmasters and site designers make is to assume that site visitors already know: a. who they are; b. what the value that they offer is; c. to whom they offer that value. Don’t make that mistake. If you do, you’ll miss these vitally-important Type III folks.

Second Priority: Type IV: people who want a service other than yours but who, if they learned about your service, may consider using your service as a substitute for the service they are looking for

Your site should also make provisions for these folks. This is a bit harder of a sell only in that it can be tricky to change a prospect’s thinking from believing they need some other type of product or service to believing that yours might do just as well (or better). Still, very much worth the effort. Hint: you can explicitly state on your site something like, “Looking for an X Widget? Try my Y Widget instead.”

Third Priority: Type II: people who want your services and have heard of you – but who can’t quite remember your name

These folks should pretty much take care of themselves once they reach your site.  But, in order to increase your chances of getting them to your site with SEO, make sure that your site’s meta tags (keywords, in particular) contain common misspellings of your company or site name.

Fourth Priority: Type I: people who want your services and already know your name

With any effort at all, you should be already ranking within the top 5 positions on major search engine results pages (SERPs) like Google, Yahoo! and Bing for your own company or site name. If so, Type I traffic should take care of itself. If not, do some SEO for your own name using blogs, backlink creation, etc.

Bottom Priority: Type V: people who don’t want your service and likely never will, even as a substitute for something else they do currently want

Basically, you can ignore these folks. Still, occasionally they will stumble across your site by accident. Or, maybe they are doing research on your company and find you that way. At any rate, for these folks, just supply an informative “About Us” page to explain who you are, what you do. That should do the trick.

Make the conscious decision to intelligently target your potential site traffic in this order of priority and you will in the process be making the best use of the time and resources you put into capturing and then converting your site traffic.