Jolina Pettie has stumbled upon a simple, yet often overlooked fact: focusing too much attention on SEO strategies is incredibly easy, but perhaps perilous for your company. As an SEO practitioner, it’s easy to get caught up in links, title tags and keywords, all the while forgetting to focus on the customers you’re actually trying to connect with. How can we teach ourselves to step back and take a more holistic approach to optimizing content while keeping the target audiences and how they behave online in mind?

Step #1 – Know Your Target Audience

• How does your target audience search for information
• How do they consume information
• What are their preferences in terms of content types and devices

Step #2 – Ask Why When Reviewing Your Marketing

• Why are we creating a certain type of content?
• What types of content will motivate them to share, progress in a buying cycle and ultimately become a customer

To read more about how to focus on the customer, go to Jolina Pettie’s blog entry, Optimize Your Online Marketing – Customers Over Keywords.