This is a mistake that many businesses make. They create a website that is focused on them. Their goal is to explain why they are the best and logical choice to do business with. They talk about their qualifications and expertise. But this is just plain wrong.

The exception to what I am talking about would be if you are a celebrity. If you are a celebrity, then people do come to your website to learn about you. They want your biography, films you have made, etc.

What should your website be about? That depends on why your visitor came to your website. They came seeking some solution to a problem or need that they have.

Here is an example. If your company provided fertilizers and lawn care products, then your visitors would arrive looking how to improve their lawn and make it greener. They did not arrive to learn about your company or even to have the merits of your fertilizer explained… at least not on your home page.

Instead discuss what they came to learn on your home page. Discuss your company on the about-us page. Discuss the specific benefits of your fertilizer on your products page. This is all about creating a customer focused website.

Here is another example. If you are an attorney, then your visitors arrive looking for help with specific legal issues. Address these on your home page and go into depth on your credentials in the about-us section.

As you layout your website, remember it is about them, not about you. You will get a better response from visitors if you address their reason for coming and talk about what they want to learn.

When you start to perform search engine marketing and optimization for your own business website you really have to figure out whether you are attempting to market a business to a B2B or B2C audience. A consumer audience could very well read their email at midnight and purchase something but not a business audience. Your SEO efforts are going to be quite different depending on which type of person you are trying to attract.

Here are some key elements to look out for B2B SEO:

SEO Demand Generation: For companies that are targeting other businesses in a niche industry, often times they need to target keywords naturally within their content and the rest of the on site optimziation for keywords that have little search volume. This is when there are industry specific terminology that may not have a high search volume yet. But sometimes it makes sense to target a mix of both keywords that people are searching for and keywords that are industry specific that will grow over time. And even sometimes a b2b focused campaign can leverage (and should) other sources of online and offline marketing to help build new keyword search volume (and build a demand) within a specific target marketplace.

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When it comes to marketing any business online people very rarely ever sit around and wait for things to just happen. If you are, it might be wise to start testing different efforts and approaches to get things moving a bit. Often times you really need to make some changes and perform tweaks to fully understand what is really working and what isn’t. This goes with every online marketing effort you could possibly think of to help start building your business.

Let’s take a look at some web marketing efforts you should always be testing:

1. Your Website: Your website is something you should be testing all the time. You are always going to get people that respond differently on your website depending on how you have things laid out. Very rarely is a website built and just left alone to function properly. You have to move things around and change things to see how different business can be overtime. You might find that having a lead sign up form on a different part of your page brings in more sign ups or a phone number in a different location all of a sudden gets the phone ringing even more. Things like lead forms being placed in different areas for a certain time period will reveal its complete effectiveness. You have to test different things on your website otherwise you could be missing out on great opportunities.

2. Email Newsletter: Your email newsletter is another great place to really test out a variety of efforts that could help you out in the long run. If you send out a regularly scheduled newsletter and you forget to test how do you know what is working well and what isn’t? Move things around and change the type of information you put into your email marketing in order to increase conversion rates and get your business growing. If you don’t change things around eventually your efforts will get a little stale for your recipients and you will reach a saturation point for your email recipients.

3. Social Media Marketing: Social media is a very big area to test things out. Try different approaches to see what it takes to get people to react back and respond to you. If you send out the same message over and over you will almost always get the same response back. Changes things up a bit.

Testing is a very important part of marketing and building a business online. Keep things moving around so you find exactly what works.

I have seen a few blog posts lately on other blogs of people saying that good content doesn’t really matter. The argument they share is how can a search engine determine what good quality content is or isn’t? It’s not like the search engine has a personality and reads the content and laughs or finds it interesting does it?

I think what it comes down to is how others interact with that specific content. If the search engines see links pointing to a certain article, press release or blog post than they consider that good quality content, which makes sense because who would want to link to it.

Here are some ways you can achieve good quality content:

1. Unique Spin: If you are writing an article about something that has been written about many times over try taking a different spin on it. If you agree or disagree with the topic apply a new unique spin that hasn’t been approached much in your industry. Re-writing the same old stuff will only have so much of an effect on increasing awareness about your business or your brand.

2. Personality: Don’t forget to try and make your audience smile a bit. Nobody wants to read something that reminds them of paint drying on a wall. They want to have a smile on their face at some point of reading something. Even it is a serious topic there are very tasteful ways to get someone to smile at you. Make your writing piece feel like it is speaking just to the person reading it and you will have more bloggers and other industry professionals linking to your work. These new links will eventually give your writing trust power and be considered “quality content” in the eyes of the search engine.

These are just some of the ways you can increase the power of your writing. You just have to think outside the box and bring something new to the table with your writing. Recreating the wheel is not going to be considered good quality content unless you add something to the belief. Even disagreeing with it and putting up a fight about your new argument will get others connecting and linking to your argument.