Think Big Blog

In the last post we talked about the importance of relationships with vendors to the modern business. Economic restrictions have made it that many businesses simply cannot handle all the details of their operations in-house and money – as well as efficiency – dictates that it is best to turn to the professionals outside the business.

Again, traditional businesses have long accepted this; having turned their marketing strategies over to marketing agencies for quite some time. They understand the value of having a separate team that is solely focused on marketing their company but to whom they do not have to pay full time salaries or additional benefits. Further, because this vendor is outside of the confines of the company that is charged with marketing, the team is not mired down in other corporate needs to which they could easily be pulled away. There is value for your dollar in a team of experts that is driven by one singular goal.

This is what online companies are coming to realize as well. There is value in turning to the professionals when it comes to marketing a web site. It is not often that a team within a company has the time or the resources to dedicate themselves exclusively to search engine optimization efforts and the branding of the company on the Internet. But this is exactly what is needed if long term success is to be within a company’s sights.

The web site optimization firm exists outside of the web site but is wholly focused on marketing that web site. The team of experts of such a firm will put marketing measures into place for a web site – whatever measures make sense – but, more than that, they will continually monitor and work these marketing efforts, giving companies a valuable “branch” to their corporate tree that can really grow their business.

Shortsightedness is often the downfall of many a business. Companies looking to save a penny here, a penny there will cut their staff dramatically and those that are left are called upon to manage the many details that are integral to the business’s survival. The problem is that when staff is stretched too thin details fall through the cracks and the company winds up costing itself more money than it was initially trying to save.

Does this mean that companies – in order not only to survive but thrive – must carry a huge staff in order to see to the many details of importance? Not necessarily. In fact, smart businesses understand the value in farming out important jobs – of creating additional legs to their company without having to take on or carry full time staff. And that is through the hiring of vendors that are focused in their work and affordable in their solutions.

Take web site marketing for instance. There is not a web site owner on the Internet that does not see the value in consistent online marketing. Traditional companies have been turning to vendors for their marketing as a matter of course for generations. The fact is that these are the experts – the experts that they would be hard pressed to staff in-house. And rather than putting together a division of their company that is solely and exclusively focused on marketing they will consider their outside marketing company to be another branch of their business. In this way vendors add enormous value to companies across all industries.

And in much the same way the web site optimization firm adds enormous value to web sites that are in need of focused marketing efforts online. Web site owners that are forward thinking know that in turning to a web site optimization firm they are creating their own separate and distinct marketing team whose sole purpose it is to elevate the visibility of their site. More in the next post…

The only thing harder than opening a business is keeping it open. You would think that with all the work that you put into getting a business started – the crazy hours, the sacrifices, the many decisions and financial expenditures – that, once the doors are open, continued operation would be a given. But this is anything but the case; everyone in business knows that you are only as good, only as viable, as your last best day. This, of course, means that getting a business open is important and requires enormous commitment; but that this commitment must be ongoing in order for there to be continued viability and success.

This is still true of any business – including web sites. Web sites take effort to launch just like any business and there must be a strong foundation put in place in order for it to be set up best for success. But in order for a web site to stay in the game it must be able to attract an audience continually; and to convert a percentage of that audience – those visitors – into customers.

Helping web sites to attract more web site traffic and build their business through their visitors is the web site optimization firm – a marketing company that exclusively helps web sites gain momentum in the online arena.

What is the goal of the web site optimization firm? To market a web site just as a traditional marketing company would market a traditional business. A web site optimization firm wants to increase a web site’s visibility, attract an audience that is pertinent to the web site (in that they are looking for the products and services that the web site has to offer), and that their rankings on the search engines are continually elevated.

Through this continued attention web sites can know without a doubt that they are not only in the game but they are going to stay there.

There are many ways to market a company – many roads. But what these roads have in common is that they are all long. There are no short ways to achieve marketing success because as quickly as the success may come is as quick as it can be gone. In order to be truly successful in marketing a web site you need to be able to stick with it – to ride out the journey and remain committed.

When it comes to marketing a web site there is a journey all its own. Many companies will work with a web site optimization firm to help them navigate the path; but the point is to stick with it and continue to be committed to the site’s success. Through such efforts as search engine optimization, pay per click and other marketing avenues, web sites can increase their rankings on the search engines and be found by the people that matter the most – the potential customers that can help build their business one purchase at a time and continue to bolster the site through their loyalty and continued visitation.

There are steps in marketing a web site but the most important one is to work with the best – those experts that understand the process and can help you navigate the way around the many changes that happen on the Internet on a nearly daily basis. Most traditional companies would never think of marketing their own business without the help of someone who really understands the market and understands the importance of marketing - as well as the many ways in which to go about it. The same holds true for online marketing. In order to market well and increase web traffic, a web site optimization firm is often the first in many steps toward success.

In the last post we talked about the importance of laying down a solid foundation for a web site before worrying about the many bells and whistles that the web site should produce. Of course before anything else it is important to ensure that the web site is designed in a user friendly manner and that there is a clear navigation plan in place as well as an effective campaign in place to produce content and products that will be attractive to the consuming public.

Next, is to make sure that the people who are likely to be customers of the web site will be able to actually find the site; and the most important component in this is through web site optimization. To this end, many web site owners will work with a web site optimization firm to help them put a proper plan in place that is most likely to be effective. A web site optimization firm will help a company explore:

• Search engine optimization – a method by which a web site can improve its online visibility and move up in the search engine rankings through organic efforts. Search engine optimization efforts will include such things as the inclusion of keyword rich content, strategic linking, and the optimization of the entire web site. This is a more invasive and time-consuming strategy but can provide multilevel and extensive success for a web site that is committed to staying on the journey.

• Pay per click – a method that is essentially the opposite of organic efforts to raise a web site’s rankings. Pay per click involves the purchase of keywords that provide the site a highly ranked place on the search engines as a sponsored ad. The effects of pay per click are immediate and remain consistent as long as the campaign is continually managed.

When you are building a house you may have many plans – you may want to have multiple levels and a variety of rooms for a variety of different purposes. And you may want to decorate different rooms to reflect a particular style. But before you do any of this – design, decoration, landscaping, and anything else – you need to make sure that your house is built solidly; that it has a strong foundation. Because without a strong foundation all the rest of it won’t make any difference whatsoever.

If you look at your web site in this manner you will see how important it is to set a solid online foundation before getting into anything else. People have all these grand ideas about “decorating” their web site and putting all this fun stuff on it that will serve to entertain, inform, and sell their visitors. But unless the site itself is strong in its foundation, all of the extras will have no bearing on the effectiveness of the site.

So what are some of these foundations – the building blocks of an effective site? For one, an effective web site needs to be a solidly developed web site that has a user friendly design and a clear navigation. Further, of course, the best web site in the world means absolutely nothing if no one can find the site. And, to this end, solid web site optimization is absolutely crucial to a site’s long term survival.

In this respect, web sites will work with professionals to help put search engine optimization and pay per click campaigns into effect; the purpose of which is to raise the online visibility of the site and increase the site’s rankings. There are many elements that go into effective online marketing. We’ll discuss these components and the effectiveness of building a solid foundation in the next post.

Seasonal businesses gear up well advance of their actual season to make sure they are first and foremost in the minds of consumers; that they are ahead of the curve and waiting for when their customers realize that they need them. This doesn’t mean, of course, that these businesses sit around the rest of the year in terms of marketing; but in these special situations the bulk of a company’s marketing money will be spent promoting the season that represents their greatest income.

This is when marketing gears up online as well. For those businesses that have an online presence, this time may be used to increase the site’s visibility with the search engines as much as possible. After all, a good spot on the search engines represents the greatest possibility that the widest cross section of potential customers will find and visit the site.

If marketing dollars are at a premium – as they almost always are (and surely are in this current economy) – then it benefits a website owner to work with those professionals that can maximize their marketing investment. In this case, a website optimization firm can help a website with their marketing strategies – including search engine optimization and pay per click that can increase a site’s ranking on the search engines and subsequently increase their exposure. But the best of such firms will make sure that such marketing is geared towards targeted prospects that are more likely to buy.

If you are a business that is looking to take advantage of their biggest season, do not ignore the Internet when it comes to your marketing efforts. Increase web traffic and grow your business with the help of a website optimization firm that can identify your goals and chart a course that is in line with your budget and your overall business plan.

You’ve heard the expression “less is more” – an expression that essentially means that quality can often stretch further and offer more value than simply volume. This is most especially true when it comes to a business’s customers. Value, not volume, is what will build a business and feed the bottom line. Look at a store for instance. Your store can be jam-packed with people each and every day (volume) but the only people that matter to the bottom line are those who are buying (value). So it obviously only benefits the store to target – through their marketing efforts - the audience that is likely to buy or is at least in the market for what the store has to offer.

The same goes for a website. A website can get tons of hits each day – traffic that works to bolster their rankings; but if the site does not target those visitors who are in the market for the products and services that the website has to offer, the value of those visitors is ultimately lost.

Website owners that want to raise their rankings and compete aggressively in the competitive online arena, will often work with a website optimization firm to help them best market their site. But be wary. Because the best online marketing companies should be interested in more than just populating the site with visitors; they should be invested in bringing high quality visitors to the site that will offer value in terms of their potential to become a customer. This is the kind of value that will serve to build a business.

Web traffic is obviously important for a website that wants to stay on the map and on the radar of the search engines. But it is the type of traffic that will ultimately determine the fate of the site. Target web traffic that makes sense and build your business with a solid foundation.