Similarly, move any kid related content off the parents site onto the kids site. This way each site has a theme and a target audience.

Then, we can more effectively attempt to position the sites where they are most likely going to receive the most traffic.

For example, we will probably want to look closely at Ask Jeeves and Yahoo! For the kids site as these engines have larger kid audiences. I know from my own experience that my 10 year old son prefers Yahoo! To any other engine out there. He does use Google from time to time but only to find desktop wallpaper for his current favorite band. Otherwise he searches with Yahoo!

For the parent portal we’ll want to focus on Google and MSN as there’s a greater chance of intercepting the parents here than on Ask or Yahoo!

So you can see here how profiling their target audiences – in this case 2 different groups with different search habits – will benefit them in the long run.

But profiling can (and should) go even further than this.

As a website owner, it is helpful, no necessary, that you you know who your target is. And I don’t just mean “female aged 25-34 with a 35,000-42,000 annual income.” I mean get specific. Get an image in your mind of who this female is. Is she married? With Children? Where do they live? What color hair and eyes does she have?

The better idea you have of this target audience the better job you will do at positioning your site in front of her eyes.

Because once you know who she is, you can begin to develop a persona about her. When does she use a search engine? What does she search for? What factors motivate her to click on a listing? These are the questions you must be able to answer in order to define your SEM campaign. And the only way to properly answer these questions is to have that picture in your mind of what she looks like.

You can also use this persona for competitive intelligence gathering. If you can place yourself in the persona’s shoes and act as they would, why not take a tour through your competitors sites. What do you like about them? What don’t you like? Perform some searches on their sites as well as a search engine. Did you find what you were looking for? What were you looking for?

The more able you are to make yourself act like your target audience the better you can position your site in front of them.

This leads to the point I made earlier when dealing with my client – how much easier do you think it will be to position a kid friendly site in front of kids than a more general site dealing with a much broader range of topics?

I hope that you can see what power you will have if you take the time early on to properly identify your target audience. And I also hope I’ve illustrated just how important it is to get as much detail about this person as possible. If you can put a face to the persona then you’ve successfully determined who your target is. And once you’ve done that you can more effectively position your website so that it attracts that audience at the right time.

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