A lot of people talk about search engine optimisation when what they mean is getting traffic.

Getting traffic is easy.  But getting the right traffic - that's the difficult bit.

You can pay to get people to come to your website - that's what you're doing when you use Google Ads, and in effect it's what you're doing if you make any kinds of promises in an email or a link.

Some traffic is better than none, but not when you're paying for it and it's the wrong traffic.

Hook up Google Analytics and you can find out what people are doing on your site when they arrive from various sources. You can also associate a cost with a source of traffic. Are you getting the wrong people on your website because you've promised them something you can't really deliver (like the cheapest prices or the best stuff)?

Honesty means you filter out the visitors you don't actually want when all's said and done - so in your Google Ads, your meta-description, and your email links, talk about what visitors you really want - what their story is, and how it should perfectly match your story.

For example:

Oxford Web

We design, build, and develop websites for growing organisations who want to invest in digital marketing because it works.

or

Oxford Web

We help membership organisations drastically reduce their administration costs by building hard-working, top-notch websites.

This time of year is as good as any for reviewing your business and your website and making sure that both are performing as they should, and that you have a plan for the next few months.

Many businesses work up to a busy time at Christmas; others are simply back from holiday with a fresh outlook and new ideas.

I find this table useful:

“Inward facing” objectives may involve staffing or administration, premises and so on, while “outward facing” objectives will normally involve your customers, suppliers, partners, members, the press, or the wider public.

Examples of “General” objectives may include staff morale, making a profit, keeping your customers better informed, finding more customers, etc., while “Specific” objectives may include things like income figures, profit margins, or numbers of new sales enquiries.

If you can't easily categorise an objective, don't worry, just pick a box to put it in. The main thing is getting them down on paper.

Not every objective you have can be fulfilled by your website or online presence - but starting from the perspective of business objectives is the right way to look at a website.

It's easier to ask "what's happening in the industry?" and be bogged down with HTML5, responsive design, twitter, pinterest and so on. But these can distract you if you don't have solid objectives and a clear focus. You should by all means learn what these things are - but you should focus on your business objectives if you're going to get anything right.

The third stage of this table is aligning the objectives with a specific action. In the example below I've focussed just on online tools - but of course in a real plan you would have other things going on:

Happy planning!