Great Post that I’m copying and pasting here:

Don’t Give Clients What They Want
By Brandon Eley

Most of us would like to think we give clients what they want, right? The client comes to you with an idea for a website, landing page, application, or other project, and you do everything you can to deliver a product that meets or exceeds their expectations. But what happens when what the client “wants” is at odds with what the client needs?

Why Are You In Business?

We all need money to survive … but very few of us are driven solely by money. Most web professionals I know want to do great work – they want to help their clients succeed.

Most clients simply do not know what they need. They think they know, some may even insist that they know (which makes it all more difficult), but most clients – especially small to mid-sized ones – don’t dig deep enough to get to the root problem they are trying to solve. Some may not even think they have a problem to begin with.

Giving Clients What They Ask For

Think of a fictitious client who comes to you wanting a website. They come to you with a sitemap of pages they want, which includes a photo gallery, mission statement, and a beautiful splash page with animation. You know the website as they asked for it will not impact their bottom line (positively, anyway), but you simply quote to build the website as requested.

You win the bid, complete the project to its specifications/requirements, and the client is initially happy with the result. But then what you feared comes to fruition … the project isn’t a success. Despite you doing the best you could, the plan was flawed, and the website does nothing for the client’s business. It’s not your fault, but the client invariably blames you, the developer/designer, for the failure.

What’s the alternative? Propose what the client needs instead of what they want. Often this will mean several additional discovery sessions and more work understanding the scope of the project. But in the end, you will be able to help your client build a project that will be successful, and often times even the initial project will be much bigger. And since the project has a much better chance of success, you are much more likely to receive future business.

Giving Clients What They Need

Instead of giving clients exactly what they ask for, instead develop a process for determining what they truly need and propose a solution to their problems. This is more in-depth than simply providing a quote or proposal for what they initially asked for, but in my experience it is almost always more work in the long term, and has a much better chance of success.

The key to a successful project is in a thorough needs assessment. Without truly understanding the problem, how can you possibly propose a solution that will work? Below is a look at the process we use to determine needs and come up with a solution.

The Initial Interview

In the initial interview, clients often think they know what they need. We listen to them, but ask lots of probing questions during the process. If they are a new client, we also ask lots of questions about their business and industry to try and understand as much as possible about their overall business goals. We may have even done research on them and their industry before the meeting to be more prepared.

In addition to asking probing questions about the specifics of their website or application, we also ask high-level questions about the project, such as:

What is the overall goal?

How will we measure success? Visits, sales, leads, etc.
Who is your target audience/customer?
Who is your competition?
What makes your website, product, or service better than the competition? How can you prove that?
How will this website/application/etc help you achieve your overall business goals?
These are just a few of the questions we may ask. The answers to some of these questions will spark even more questions. It’s not uncommon for us to talk for two or three hours.

Determining The Real Problem

From research and conversations with the client, we often find that the website itself is not what the client wants. The client usually has a pain point, a deep problem, they want solved and they think (or hope) the website or application will solve it. They might need more sales, and they think the website will just magically bring in the business. Or they might be getting inundated with customer service issues and hope the website will alleviate some of that.

We have had clients come to us wanting a printed flyer to hand out to generate business, but they really needed a website and online marketing campaign to actually reach their target market. Determining the root problem allows you to craft an appropriate solution.

Propose a Solution

Before presenting the solution, be sure to first get the client to confirm the problem. We will typically say something like “from our conversations, we understand that one of your biggest challenges is customer support” or “we understand your main issue is reaching new customers”. When they confirm that, we then explain what we think they really need.

It’s important to note that we don’t necessarily criticize their ideas. People are very protective of their ideas, and they almost always think they are good. Instead, we simply use our research and industry data to show why our proposed solution might help them reach their goal faster or more efficiently.

You’d be surprised how many clients appreciate the work we put into this process, and are excited about working with us even when the overall project may be much larger or more expensive than they originally thought. When other competitors simply quote what they asked for, we went above and beyond by providing what we felt they needed.

Written By:

Brandon Eley

Brandon Eley is the Interactive Director for Kelsey Advertising & Design and owner of online shoe retailer 2BigFeet.com and the co-author of Online Marketing Inside

I don’t expect any current or prospective client of mine to watch this video all the way through…

My message is that I DO watch stuff like this all the way through! :-) That’s my job…

“What? You expect me to write a blog, Tweet about stuff and be on Facebook half the day AND promote my stuff on the Web too. Forget about it!”

“I’ve got a business to run!”

That’s pretty much the response I get from clients when I explain all the different marketing things that you need to do to really get on top of this Social Media Marketing game. But relax, all is not as it first appears…

Here are a few things you might not be aware of when it comes to using WordPress and clever automation:

• You can ‘schedule’ your content to ‘drip feed’ into your site over time.

For example I could write 10 posts today and have them automatically ‘publish’ at a set time e.g. every 3 days, once a week.

• When ‘published’ my Twitter account can be automatically updated

When those posts were published my Twitter account would be informed. In other words people ‘following’ me on Twitter would get the ‘heads up’ that I had new content on the site.
TWITTER SIDENOTE: I can also import the tweets of people I respect into my Twitter feed ( it kind of looks like I’m posting/tweeting) so my Twitter account has regular content and I can Tweet as and when I choose. For example I rarely tweet on my account here but get new followers regularly as my content is good ( even if it’s not all mine!)

• Ditto re my Facebook accounts!

I can have my latest blog posts appear automatically in my personal profile ‘Wall’ or my Facebook Business Page ‘Wall’ ( better!) so anybody who has ‘liked’ my Page will be informed re my new content. PLUS if they respond to it all their personal conatcts will see the link to my Page and Blog. I think we call that ‘Viral marketing’ don’t we? :-)

• Ditto to my LinkedIn account or LinkedIn Group

My content and blog feed will show up in my profile and on my Contacts and my Groups pages.

• WordPress informs RSS aggregators of my new content

So not only do the Search Engines get asked to pop by so they can index my new pearls of wisdom so too do visitors who have chosen to follow me this way – they might even be e-mailed to come and check out the new stuff if they’ve chosen that option.

• Neat WordPress plugin lets me syndicate my content to various Social Media sites

Plugins are wonderful things ( mostly) which you can strap on to a WordPress CMS set up to do all kinds of cool stuff that improves my sites and the users experience when they visit. Once set up this plugin lets me send the new content to various ‘Social Media‘ sites, such as micro blogging sites, for those all important back links.

So, and in conclusion, just by you or your blog goto guy writing ONE good post all of the above can happen on auto pilot!

Only word of warning is do not do this unless your content is worthy of promotion. Crappy content should not be on your site anyway – and if it is don’t promote it!

For example if I was writing a post here to chase a particular ‘search term’ and to rank well for that term I would most likely turn off all my automated stuff for that one post – which is not all that easy to do. So in a way it promotes writing for visitors and not Search Engines which, despite what some might tell you, is always the best way to go.

Posted from Hammersmith, England, United Kingdom.

I know, I know ( I’m trying hard not to say it – especially to a future potential client of SEOptimum) – but sorry, here goes, “Do ya feel lucky punk? Do ya?” I’m afraid luck ain’t going to cut it in the Search Engine rankings today!

Let SEOptimum make your day!

A decade ago it was pretty simple to get your web site on page #1 of Google – even unintentionally – knowing only the tiniest information on what search engines liked to see on your site.

But those were also the days of widespread ‘gaming’ of the system, cheating!

Examples were things as simple as filling a page with the desired Search Term hundreds of times and then making that text the same colour as the background so while search engines could see it ( they read pages by the code that lies behind what we see in our browsers) the visitor couldn’t.

In fact any way of getting Google to see the site differently from the actual page visitor was the favoured ‘Black Hat‘ technique.

Even today many so called Marketers are still searching for ‘Tricks’ and ‘Loopholes’ to con their way to an undeserved page ranking on page #1 of Google – crazy!

The fact is that Google wants just ONE thing for its users: that the results that show up when you or I type in a search term into the box are the best they can be, and are relevant to what we are looking for.  They employ a lot of very smart people to help them do that and since it’s what WE want too, or should be, why would we want to try and cheat?

Here are some of the things Google checks on sites and so ranks them accordingly in a constantly changing and evolving way ( don’t forget your site is indexed and re-indexed constantly). It’s called their Algorithm and it’s a secret sauce of likes and dislikes that decide how your site, and pages within that site, rank in the Google results pages. Only a select few know all the ingredients but here are a few basics that most good SEO guys agree on:

• Domain age: Older sites get a little more respect than new ones
• Amount of content: highly unlikely you’ll find a 1,2 or 3 page site on page #1
• Actual search term related content: Is the phrase being searched for to be found in the page Title, Body Content, Source Code? In other words ‘On Site SEO‘ is the page/site optimised for this search term?
• How long do people stay on the page? Oh yes Google knows! If people click away then Google knows that page is not what they were looking for so will be marked down for that particular search term. On the other hand if people stay on the page for a short while Google assumes they’ve found something relevant – Hurrah!
• Do visitors look at more than one page while they are on your site? Another indicator that your content is relevant.
• Do your images have accurate ALT tags ( i.e. descriptive text) for those surfers with images turned off?
• Does the site have ‘business’ pages? Like a Privacy Policy, a Contact Page with a telephone number and a physical address, an About Us page – these all show Google that you have a business-like site.
• Do other similar sites link to your site?
• Do Authority Sites link to your site?
• Do those links appear ‘natural’? - or did you suddenly get 1000 backlinks over night ( tut tut!)
• Is there interactivity on the site? For example: Blog comments
• Is the content updated fairly regularly? The more it is the more often you get indexed, the more you are indexed the higher you rank, simples!
  
• Is the site ‘crawler’ friendly? Google likes its search bots to be able to quickly find their way around all the pages of a site – they like it therefore when your site has a SiteMap Page. If the bots can’t find a page it won’t be indexed so no searcher will ever find it. Your site sure but that page, no.
• How fast does your site take to load? No massive image files or poor coding please!

and on and on… there are no doubt hundreds of other components in the Google Algorithm and this small sample shows just how smart Google is and what they know about your site, its history and everything your visitors do when they pay you a visit. It’s pretty mind boggling.

So unlike the old days when any ‘chancer’ could game the system, today SEO Consultants who know what they are about work hand in hand with Google instead of trying to mug them – because Google says it’s wrong and get it wrong and you will pay!

Or are you feeling lucky?

Posted from Hammersmith, England, United Kingdom.

So here’s my interpretation of Matrix SEO and what I believe the Red Pill, Blue Pill stuff is all about and how this relates to you (HINT: it doesn’t matter which pill you take as long as I take the right one on your behalf!)

So, what does the Red Pill do?

It allows us to see the reality of the Internet and understand that everything on it is interconnected – much like the theory of ‘six degrees of separation‘ which states that every human is at most 6 connections away from any other human being on the planet through a series of personal acquaintances.

Now whether that hypothesis is true and actually proven I don’t know but it may well be true when applied to all the web sites in the world being somehow linked to each other.

That can cause some ramifications when you are doing Search Engine Optimisation to rank your site higher in Google and Yahoo/Bing.

The thing about Search Engines is if no other site, not one, links to you in some way the chances of your web site being ‘indexed’ by Google are pretty remote. Google sends little ‘bots‘ around the web collecting information and the roads those bots travel are the ‘links’ between web sites and web site pages.

No Link = No Road – and your site is in the wilderness never to be found by anybody ‘searching’ the web.

By the same token Google regards the number of links going into your site as a sign of your importance, or lack thereof and this is reflected in where your site ranks for relevant search terms. BUT Google also likes to see that those links coming to you are from sites either related to your content, or from sites is perceives as being ‘authoritative’ – CNN or the BBC for example.

However if your site is mentioned and linked to from a boat load of Porn sites Google might not be so impressed.

And there’s the problem right there…

Google knows where your links have come from ( it’s how they found you after all) and if you get a lot of links from ‘bad neighbourhoods’ Google will rank you down. So lets say a SEO Consultant finds a really cool site, maybe a .gov or .edu site that has high PR ( i.e. Google’s Page Ranking factor of a web site’s importance: 0-10) and puts your link on it that’s great right?

Sure is – until every Spammer in the world discovers the same site and smothers it with links to Viagra sites ( eerm remember the Blue pill?)

Suddenly that backlink isn’t looking quite as advantageous is it?

That is why, here at SEOptimum, we ensure that this doesn’t happen by only allowing direct back links to your site from ‘authority’ sites and ‘nice neighbourhoods’ or sites where we have total control over the content.

Then we find that cool site the other SEO guy found and put a link there not to your site but to the page on one of the ‘nice’ sites where your backlink sits. By giving that page more juice it will become more important in Google’s eyes so the ‘safe’ backlink on it will hold more weight and your site will benefit from that.

Now if, as in the previous scenario, that ‘cool’ site goes ‘rogue’ then the backlink won’t be pointing directly to you – this is one degree of separation that is very useful.

Posted from Hammersmith, England, United Kingdom.