Have you ever wondered what keywords and phrases your visitors are searching with? Your website statistics will tell you, mostly. If you're using Google Analytics, look at the Traffic Sources; here you'll find a list of keywords and phrases most commonly used to send visitors to your site, along with their popularity.

If most of your keywords are variations on your name or business name, you can assume those visitors were most likely looking for you but couldn't remember your web address.

What about missing keywords? If the keywords used are a good start but there are other appropriate search terms that aren't making that connection, those terms are most likely being searched on but aren't bringing up your site. At this point you need to let your webmaster know which terms aren't working that should be, and find ways to get them on your site. More on how to do this in a future post.

Another way to use your traffic sources data is to see what your visitors are looking for. For instance, the primary purpose of this blog currently is to share my knowledge with my clients and to answer questions they frequently have. However I've also blogged about my iMac, and I'm finding that's what people are searching on. That's not necessarily a problem as my clients are given the direct URL to my site and therefor shouldn't be using search engines, but I am finding it quite interesting how many people are viewing my iMac saga as well, based on their "iMac" search words.