Given the current state of the economy, most companies are looking for ways to cut costs and still obtain new business. To do so, that requires careful thought in how to allocate a limited marketing budget so that the items your company invests in generate the most bang for the buck.
The best marketing investment your company can make in 2009 is in its own web site. More specifically, focus on activities that improve your site’s position on the major search engines to drive traffic and leads to your company. The economy may have slowed down, but it hasn’t come to a halt. There are customers out there – you just have to get your company in a position to be found by them.
Google is the 800 lb. gorilla in search with about 65% market share. Search engines as a whole are the most efficient way to reach your target audience. More than 80% of Internet users say they use a search engine to look for products and services. And more than 90% say they’ll go no further than the first 3 pages of a search to find what they’re looking for before changing the keywords. If your site is not showing up on the first 3 pages of Google for important keywords to your industry, then you’re missing out on a significant amount of potential new business.
To help you plan your 2009 marketing activities, here are some specific ideas for improving your site’s position on Google:
Search Engine Optimization: Making sure your site is performing on the keywords that prospects are searching for is critical. If your site has not been optimized, then it likely is not performing on Google. Keyword Research: Search Engine Optimization starts with identifying the keywords Internet users in your industry would use to find you. This process helps to prioritize what type of content your site should focus on; if there are many terms that describe your business, a keyword research report will help determine which ones are the most important for driving the most traffic to your site. CSS: If it’s been a while since your site was built, it likely would benefit from re-programming in CSS. CSS, aka Cascading Style Sheets, allows graphic design parameters of a site (fonts, colors, graphics, etc.) to be coded separately from the content. This flattened programming structure helps search engine robots to get to your content more quickly. CSS also enables one to order the content so that search engines are indexing the most important content first. XML Site Map: This is different from the site map on your web site. An XML site map is a file on your server that gives Google and Yahoo indexing instructions, i.e. which pages to index, how often, alerts them to new content, etc. Google Analytics: This traffic-reporting system won’t directly impact your performance on Google, but it will help you track your site’s performance and provide good information for devising a search engine optimization strategy. New Content: Identifying and creating new web site content that establishes your company as an expert in its industry is well worth the effort. Search engines rank technical and educational material much higher than standard sales information. Topics like technical data sheets, industry glossaries, explanations of technical processes, instructional videos and product photos (with captions) are all highly valued search engine bait because the search engines believe this type of content will be of significant interest to your potential customers. In-bound Links: One of the important factors considered by search engines when ranking competing sites is the number and quality of incoming links to each site. The more quality sites that link to you the more important your site is perceived to be by the search engines. Good links to get include those from industry associations, trade publications and business directories. Posting news releases and articles on third-party sites also provides an avenue for incoming links.
The best reason to invest in these areas is that each of these projects will benefit your company long after the expenditure through increased visibility on the search engines and more site traffic.
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