Every post, article, or sentence you post on your blog or website should be tailored to your target audience. But to write for them, you must know who they are and what they need from to ensure you're truly reaching the right group of people, and those you have the best chance of selling to.

Before you write the first word, take time to determine who your ideal customer is. Who is your target audience? Who is the specific buyer (or buyers) you should gear your marketing efforts toward.

Failure to identify this group, and direct your marketing toward them, will cause you to miss leads, conversions and sales. Ignoring the importance of identifying your target audience will cause you to waste your creative efforts on visitors who are much less likely to buy from you. No one wants to do that.

Learn to recognize your readers and target audience by asking yourself three simple questions that will help you identify what group of people is most likely to buy what you have to sell.

First, do you know where your customers are coming from? Not the kind of “walking in their shoes” knowing, but the literal, where are customers coming from when they find your blog or website. This may be from Google or another search engine, from an inbound link on another website or blog, or even from an offline ad depending on your marketing methods.

Know this by tracking marketing results and incoming links in order to better understand what attracted readers to your blog or visitors to your website to begin with. Then you can know what they came to your site to find so you can offer it to them.

And just what did they came to find? Understanding this will help you know the type of content your readers find most useful. Whether it’s technical articles, or short tips in your niche, product reviews, resources, or simply human interest stories. Whatever your readers are looking for, offer them what they want—in abundance.

Also, understand where those same targeted customers spend their time when they're not at your site. What other blogs or websites attract their interest or offer them what they’re looking for? Understanding that can help you learn to recognize your competitors, as well as helping you discover what your blog or website may be lacking so you can provide it.

Identifying your readers can help you improve your SEO results by helping you better understand what attracts people to your site, what they want to find when they get there, and what you may need to add to keep them coming back. And this knowledge can help you meet the needs of your target audience better in order to increase results all around.