Have you ever read Google’s Ten Things We Know To Be True? If not, go do it. It’s not long, but it provides pretty valuable insight into how Google runs, and what has made them as big as they are.
I was thinking about these principles this week, and kept going back to the first one, “focus on the user and all else will follow.” I realized I’ve been looking at that wrong this whole time when applied to Gravitate Online, and SEO in general. This will almost definitely be a “duh” moment for pretty much everyone else. I’ve always put our clients in for “user,” and tried to focus on the client’s goals. That’s really missing the point.
By focusing on the users of the client’s web site, we can get much better results. In my defense, I have been preaching about user experience a lot, but always through the lens of the client rather than the user.
As a B2B company, it’s important to get those things straight. You have to make your customer happy, and focus on their needs, but isn’t the best way to do that to make sure their customers are happy and having their needs met? Every piece of content, every blog or Facebook post, every new picture should be about making that client’s online presence better for their target audience, not just about appeasing the client. By doing that, we have a better chance of creating useful and relevant content, which will be more likely to rank, drive traffic and convert. Happy end users make happy clients, which make happy marketers. Happy customers are good for business.
But you guys already knew all that. I’m just happy to catch up.