If You Build It, Will They Come? Does it even Matter?

Build it and they will come. When did we hear that before? A lot of Dot Com companies did and still do take the same approach. The problem with these folks is that they don’t do their homework. These folks put themselves in place of their customers and make their decision for them. It’s sort of similar to throwing a dart in the dark and expecting it to hit somewhere. But by going with that approach you can miss horribly. A lot of companies have gone bankrupt by taking this approach. They have introduced a product or a service without realizing the demand for that item. That’s why a customer-centric approach is always the best way to go.

When you take the “I am going to build it, and someone in this big world going to like it,” you are seriously miscalculating your chances. You are basically throwing a dart hoping that it will hit the mark, and you are hoping that the mark will be a big enough market for you to survive. What if your product appeals to only 1000 people. Sure. There is someone who’s going to like your product, but how are you going to monetize it?

The same concept applies to SEO. Folks build sites and create thousands of pages without doing proper research or a good plan for on-page and off-page search engine optimization. If you ask these folks what their business model is about, they are probably going to tell you that they have so many pages, and Google will eventually find them. That’s pretty much how they are going to make money. Now, if you take that approach, you are putting yourself in a risky position. First of all, there is no guarantee that Google will rank you high in its index. And even if they do, you are not going to become a true heavyweight unless you actually provide a unique value to your visitors. People always talk about how they are going to build it and people will come. But nobody asks them, “so what?” If people don’t like your solution, it doesn’t matter if they come or not. And those folks who do come to your site are going to leave it as fast as they found it.

At the end of the day, you are not only going to have to build it for a specific audience, you are going to have to make sure you optimize your site properly so people do come to your site. Additionally, you are going to make sure there is some unique value behind your service. Believe it or not getting ranked high on Google doesn’t necessarily lead to making millions.