An old saying goes, “Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.” Search engine optimization falls into that category.

Local media sites see a unique behavior from SEO if they capture local visitors who use Google and others as the starting point simply for going to a Web site even when they already know the name of that site. The largest number of search engine visitors for my sites already knew the name of the product or site. Quite a few simply entered the name of my sites in the Google search box rather than in the address window.

Just as Google must rue the visitors who use that site for something other than its prime purpose, local sites must rue the visitors who come to their sites from another part of the country or the world by accident via search engines.

They have no lasting audience or advertiser value. They consume paid bandwidth. They even email or call to complain about something they don’t like if they’re in a bad mood that day, which consumes time and labor. They distort site audience metrics; higher unique visitors as a result of better SEO results in lower frequency – meaning visits per unique – because they tend to be one-time visitors. They also increase impressions on local advertisers’ banners while lowering the clickthrough rate because someone in Hawaii has no intention of visiting a Toyota dealer in Georgia.

Effective SEO defines a specific audience in addition to driving numbers. It is best implemented with targeting in mind — usually geographic targeting for a local site or demographic targeting for a national vertical. It uses precise titles, file names, meta tags and meta descriptions and not words chosen simply to attract eyeballs of any kind.

A concerted SEO effort can result in 50 to 100 percent growth in visits from search engines within a short period of time. But it is the quality of the traffic that pays the highest dividends.