By Jen Ruhman, San Diego SEO Expert
When a new client contacts me about SEO, they often expect me to begin with keywords.
They assume I’ll immediately ask:
- What keywords do you want to rank for?
- Who are your competitors?
- How many blog posts do you want each month?
- How many backlinks do you need?
Those questions may come later, but they aren’t where I start.
After more than 20 years working in SEO, I’ve learned that a successful campaign begins with understanding the business—not opening an SEO tool.
Before I recommend a new page, rewrite a title tag, or build a content calendar, I need to know what the client is actually trying to accomplish.
Otherwise, it’s easy to create an SEO campaign that looks busy but doesn’t produce meaningful growth.
Here are the five questions I ask every new SEO client and why each answer shapes the strategy I build.
1. Which Services or Products Matter Most to Your Business?
This is usually the first question I ask.
Not all services are equally valuable.
A company may offer ten different services, but two or three of them may generate most of its revenue.
Another service might be highly profitable but underpromoted.
Some services may attract many inquiries but rarely turn into ideal clients.
If I don’t understand that, I could spend months improving visibility for the wrong part of the business.
For example, imagine a medical practice offers several treatments.
One treatment may bring in a high volume of searches but very few qualified patients.
Another may have lower search volume but lead to longer-term, higher-value relationships.
From an SEO perspective, the second treatment may deserve more attention.
That’s why I don’t automatically prioritize the keyword with the biggest search volume.
I prioritize the opportunity most closely connected to the client’s business goals.
This is one reason I believe more website traffic isn’t always better.
The goal isn’t simply attracting more visitors.
The goal is attracting the right visitors to the right pages.
What I’m trying to understand
When I ask about important services, I’m listening for things like:
- Which services generate the most revenue?
- Which services have the strongest profit margins?
- Which services does the business want to grow?
- Which services attract the best long-term clients?
- Are there services the company no longer wants to emphasize?
- Are there seasonal priorities?
Those answers help me determine which pages deserve the most attention first.
Without that information, keyword research is just a list of numbers.
With it, keyword research becomes a business strategy.
2. Who Is Your Ideal Customer?
Many businesses say their ideal customer is “everyone.”
That usually means the strategy isn’t focused enough yet.
SEO works best when we know exactly who we’re trying to reach.
A local family-owned business may want homeowners within a 20-mile radius.
A financial advisor may want high-net-worth individuals approaching retirement.
A medical practice may want patients seeking a very specific treatment.
A national company may serve multiple audiences but need separate pages for each one.
The more clearly we understand the customer, the easier it becomes to create content that speaks directly to that person.
Why this changes the SEO strategy
Your ideal customer influences:
- The keywords we target
- The questions we answer
- The language we use
- The locations we optimize for
- The trust signals we highlight
- The calls to action we place on the page
A website written for everyone often connects with no one.
A website written for a clearly defined audience feels much more relevant.
That relevance matters to both users and search engines.
If someone lands on a page and immediately thinks, “This company understands exactly what I need,” they’re much more likely to stay, explore, and contact the business.
That’s why I look beyond keyword volume and focus heavily on search intent.
Someone researching a general topic may not be ready to hire anyone.
Someone searching for a specific service in a specific city is usually much closer to making a decision.
I also want to understand the wrong customer
This is just as important.
Sometimes a business receives plenty of leads, but they’re the wrong leads.
They may come from:
- People outside the service area
- Customers looking for the cheapest possible option
- Searches for services the company doesn’t provide
- Informational queries with no commercial intent
- Industries the business no longer serves
SEO should improve lead quality, not just lead quantity.
Understanding who the client doesn’t want helps me avoid attracting traffic that wastes everyone’s time.
3. What Does a Successful SEO Campaign Look Like to You?
This question often reveals whether the client and I are measuring success the same way.
Some clients want more phone calls.
Others want booked consultations.
Some want online purchases.
Others need stronger visibility before launching into a new market.
A business may want to rank for a specific keyword, but that ranking may not be the best measure of success.
If the keyword brings no leads, it isn’t helping the business.
That’s why I ask clients to describe what success would actually look like.
Would they be happy with:
- Ten additional qualified leads per month?
- More appointment requests?
- Better visibility in San Diego?
- Increased revenue from a specific service?
- More branded searches?
- Stronger rankings across an entire topic?
- Better placement in Google Maps?
- More visibility in AI-generated search results?
The answer determines what I track.
Rankings are useful, but they aren’t the final goal
I absolutely monitor rankings.
They help me understand whether pages are gaining visibility.
But I also look at:
- Impressions
- Organic clicks
- Qualified traffic
- Contact forms
- Phone calls
- Booked appointments
- Revenue
- Conversion rates
- Engagement with important pages
A ranking report can look impressive while the business receives no meaningful benefit.
That’s why I prefer to connect SEO activity to business outcomes whenever possible.
My job isn’t to make a dashboard look exciting.
My job is to help the business grow.
This is also why I often ignore vanity metrics and focus on what actually matters. I explain that philosophy further in The SEO Changes I Ignore and Why.
4. What Has Already Been Tried?
Before I recommend anything, I want to know what has already happened.
This helps me avoid repeating work, overlooking past problems, or making assumptions about the website’s history.
Sometimes a client has worked with several SEO companies.
Sometimes the business owner has been managing SEO alone.
Sometimes a website redesign changed hundreds of URLs.
Sometimes a previous agency published large amounts of low-quality content or built questionable backlinks.
The current website may only tell part of the story.
Questions I usually ask
- Have you worked with an SEO company before?
- What did they focus on?
- Did you see any improvement?
- Were pages deleted or redesigned?
- Have URLs changed?
- Were backlinks purchased?
- Was content generated at scale?
- Have you received a manual action or security warning?
- Do you have access to Google Search Console and Google Analytics?
- Which tactics seemed to help?
- Which tactics felt like a waste of time?
These answers give me context.
For example, if traffic declined after a redesign, I’ll want to check for lost pages, missing redirects, altered internal links, and removed metadata.
If hundreds of blog posts were published but the important service pages still don’t rank, the issue may be strategy rather than content volume.
If the company previously targeted national keywords but only serves San Diego, the site may need much stronger local relevance.
I’m not looking to criticize the previous work
SEO strategies evolve.
Business priorities change.
Websites change hands.
Google changes.
My goal isn’t to point fingers.
My goal is to understand what happened so I can make better decisions moving forward.
Sometimes previous work created a strong foundation.
Other times it created problems that need to be cleaned up.
Either way, knowing the history helps me build a more realistic roadmap.
That’s also why I rarely recommend replacing a website without first reviewing what can be preserved and improved.
You can read more about that in Why I Rarely Recommend a New Website.
5. Why Should Someone Choose You Instead of a Competitor?
This may be the most important question in the entire conversation.
SEO can help people find your business.
But once they arrive, the website still needs to convince them.
If the page looks and sounds exactly like every competitor, rankings alone may not produce leads.
I want to understand what makes the business genuinely different.
That may include:
- Decades of experience
- A specialized process
- Faster service
- Direct access to the owner
- Better credentials
- A unique treatment approach
- Local knowledge
- Strong guarantees
- More personalized support
- Better customer service
- A narrow area of expertise
- Proven results
Those differences should influence the content.
Generic content creates generic websites
I frequently see service pages that could belong to almost any company.
They say things like:
- We provide quality service.
- Our team cares about customers.
- Contact us today.
- We are experienced professionals.
None of those statements are bad.
They’re simply too broad to be persuasive.
The strongest website content explains:
- What the company does differently
- Who it serves best
- What the process looks like
- Why customers trust it
- What experience it brings
- What a customer can expect
This creates better SEO content because it adds something original.
It also helps establish the experience, expertise, authority, and trust that generic AI-generated content often lacks.
This question helps me find the story
Every business has a story.
Sometimes the owner has been doing the work for 30 years.
Sometimes the company was founded because the owner saw a problem in the industry.
Sometimes the business serves a highly specialized audience.
Sometimes clients work directly with the owner rather than being passed to a large account team.
These details matter.
They help transform a page from a collection of keywords into something that feels credible and human.
Why I Ask Business Questions Before SEO Questions
These five questions may not sound technical.
That’s the point.
SEO is not separate from the business.
It should support the business.
Before I decide which keywords to target, I need to understand:
- Which services matter
- Who the ideal customer is
- What success looks like
- What has already been tried
- Why the business deserves to be chosen
Once I know those things, the technical work becomes much more focused.
I can build a strategy around the right goals instead of simply checking boxes.
That may include:
- Strengthening service pages
- Creating location pages
- Improving internal links
- Building topic clusters
- Updating outdated content
- Fixing technical problems
- Improving calls to action
- Strengthening trust signals
- Earning relevant backlinks
- Optimizing for Google and AI search
But each recommendation should connect back to the business.
Otherwise, it’s just activity.
What Happens After These Questions?
Once I understand the business, I begin reviewing the website and data.
I look at:
- Site structure
- Search intent
- Existing rankings
- Internal linking
- Content quality
- Technical health
- Local signals
- Authority
- Conversion opportunities
I explain this process in more detail in What I Look for During the First 30 Minutes of an SEO Audit.
From there, I build a prioritized roadmap.
Not every issue needs to be fixed immediately.
Not every keyword deserves a page.
Not every blog topic deserves to be published.
The strategy should begin with the improvements most likely to create meaningful progress.
The Answers May Change Over Time
These questions aren’t only useful at the beginning of a campaign.
I revisit them as the business evolves.
A company may add a new service.
A previously small service may become highly profitable.
The target customer may change.
The service area may expand.
The competitive landscape may shift.
SEO strategies should evolve with the business.
That’s why I don’t believe in building a plan once and following it blindly forever.
A good strategy needs structure, but it also needs room to adapt.
Final Thoughts
The best SEO conversations don’t begin with keywords.
They begin with the business.
Before I can help a company rank, I need to understand what it wants to rank for, why that visibility matters, and what should happen when someone arrives on the website.
That’s why I ask these five questions:
- Which services or products matter most?
- Who is your ideal customer?
- What does success look like?
- What has already been tried?
- Why should someone choose you?
The answers guide almost every decision that follows.
They help me prioritize the right pages, attract the right audience, and measure the outcomes that actually matter.
SEO works best when it isn’t treated as a separate marketing checklist.
It should be built around the company’s goals, customers, strengths, and long-term vision.
That’s how I approach every campaign.
Ready to Talk About Your SEO Strategy?
A successful SEO campaign should be built around your business—not a generic package or a list of disconnected tasks.
If you’re looking for an SEO expert in San Diego who will take the time to understand your goals before recommending a strategy, I’d be happy to learn more about your business.
During your consultation, we can discuss what you want to grow, where your current website may be falling short, and which opportunities deserve attention first.