Think Big Blog

It’s that time of year when we head into our closets to sort and discard clothes and turn over our homes to ensure that we clean out the cobwebs and clutter of the past winter. Spring cleaning, in fact, is something that we habitually do as a nation; something that is as traditional as the holidays that come every spring. Just as we put effort into cleaning out our homes so too should we take the time to freshen up our web sites. Our web sites, after all, are a direct reflection of our business and the first impression that many will have of the quality of our products or level of our abilities. If you haven’t thought about spring cleaning your web site then now is the time. To get started you should work with a web site optimization firm that can assess your situation and make the recommendations that will elevate your site to the next level.

Working with a web site optimization firm will give you the insight you need to make whatever changes need to be made. Even a traditional business needs to make changes in order to keep the attention of their audience - stock turnovers, changes in store design, creative advertising, and more. The same can be said for web sites that need to engage their audience in order to maintain interest and to gain the attention of the search engines so that they can elevate their rankings and increase web site traffic.

Making changes and refreshing a site may include the creation and implementation of additional optimized content - utilizing the appropriate keywords that correspond to the products and services that the business offers and are likely to be used in a search.

By making additions and changing things up within the context of a search engine optimization campaign, you can keep your site on the radar of the search engines and engage your audience creatively.

In the last post we talked about the importance of having a plan in place for growing your online business - just as you would put a plan in place to grow your traditional business. In the online arena, however, there is an additional component in the mix - the search engines - that can ultimately make or break a marketing campaign. The search engines are the gatekeepers to web site traffic, plain and simple, and they must be engaged in order to help any web site build business and attract their audience.

As we said, most people in putting a plan in place will work with a web site optimization firm; simply because such professionals understand the nuances of the search engines and the best way to go about getting their attention. Things change on a dime in an online marketing campaign; a web site optimization firm can navigate accordingly. A professional online marketing company will:

Determine the status of your web site going into a campaign - where does it rank? Is it utilizing the appropriate keywords to attract the right audience? Is there enough relevant content on your site?

Make a plan. From there a web site optimization firm will help you choose relevant keywords - the words that the audience you seek will use in an online search; and they will integrate those keywords into an aggressive and well- managed search engine optimization or pay per click campaign.

Manage the details. Going forward a reputable web site optimization firm will make sure to manage all the details of your campaign on a daily basis and make adjustments where and when they are necessary. Things change quickly online and a web site optimization firm will respond accordingly.

With the help of a professional web site optimization firm you can build your online business and find success.

When it comes to building business online there are similarities and differences to building business in a traditional manner. While it is still important to put things in place that will attract the attention of your audience, hold their attention, and inspire a sale, there is an extra element in online business. The search engines. In a traditional business, your actual physical presence alerts people to the fact that you are there - word of mouth, advertising, foot traffic, etc. Online you have to go through a few extra steps to get noticed. The online market is so crowded and so vast that it’s unlikely that someone would just stumble upon you; they need to know where to look and the search engines give them that information.

You can’t grow your business online until you are noticed and subsequently ranked by the search engines so that your potential customers can find you; there’s no other way to look at it. You have to do your homework and put the work in to getting ranked on the engines so that ultimately your audience can find you and you can grow your customer base. Putting the work in doesn’t mean just building a site and launching it; it means working that site everyday in terms of building rankings and marketing your online business - generating more web site traffic and becoming a place that visitors come again and again. Most people do this through the help of a web site optimization firm that is experienced in marketing web sites and helping them building a business.

A web site optimization firm will then put a strategy into place that will allow the company in question to make a plan to grow their online business; and a reputable web site optimization firm will manage that campaign every step of the way. More in the next post…

As spring comes quickly around the corner, businesses that specialize in seasonal products are getting their ducks in a row in order to be able to best serve their customers. Web sites are no exception and, in fact, need to be given careful consideration in terms of changing things up for online visitors; especially when it comes to an search engine optimization program. Throughout the year, a well run SEO campaign is managed on a daily basis - looked at from all angles in order to ensure that everything is being properly done to attract the search engines and visitors. Content is extremely important when it comes to the search engines - that are always looking for relevant material on websites. Changing content for seasonal use can benefit a website in a number of ways:

Whenever a web site is refreshed in some way it attracts the attention of the search engines so changing content from time to time is never a bad thing in terms of getting you on the radar of the search engines and subsequently earning you better rankings. Further, algorithms change frequently when it comes to what the search engines are looking for as far as ranking criteria. There is a current trend towards placing more importance on content again and that trend is being watched carefully by online marketing firms that want to get their clients ranked and build more web site traffic.

Paying attention to changes in season keeps your online visitors interested and ultimately that’s important to building your business. It’s one thing to gain momentum on the search engines and build traffic, and another to retain the interest of your visitors enough so that you can build your business. You want to keep your visitors interested and propel them to come back again and again in order to see what is new.

In the last post we talked about how web traffic and smart web traffic are two different things. While it has always seemingly been the goal of web sites to generate more web site traffic the real work has been in trying to generate more appropriate web site traffic. What good is it to flood a web site with visitors who are not in the market for that site’s products and services? At the end of the day this doesn’t make the business any money. At the same time this is exactly what web sites are opening themselves up to when they simply launch a site and don’t spend any time or energy in online marketing. A web site optimization firm can help a web site not only put a strategy together that will help elevate their rankings on the search engines but will also help them reach out to an audience that has the potential to grow their business. Here’s how it’s done.

A web site optimization firm will help a company embark in online marketing in whatever capacity they are most comfortable. For instance, the company may want to engage in an SEO campaign - an organic search engine optimization campaign in which case there is not only the choosing of keywords but also the optimization of pages on the site and often a strategic linking campaign. Another company may wish to pursue web site traffic through pay-per-click or PPC in which they purchase their top spot on the search engines. In either case the magic rests with the keywords; the right keywords can deliver smart web traffic, the wrong keywords can deliver traffic that is only confused when they arrive because you don’t offer what they want.

Work with a strong and reputable web site optimization firm to identify those keywords that will give you a pinpoint accurate way to reach the appropriate people - to generate smart web traffic.

Imagine you had a great idea for a business - a strong idea that you know had the potential to make a lot of money - and you could not only easily identify the perfect audience for this business but they were all in one place. Perhaps your perfect customers are all in one town because you offer a product that is conducive to their particular lifestyle; it is a perfect complement. Then imagine that instead of opening your business right in the center of town where your acknowledged audience could easily find you and visit you often, you open up far from town in a place that is difficult to find. Does that make any sense at all? Of course not. Most people see the logic in this scenario but fail to recognize that they do something that makes just as little sense when they launch a web site without doing any online marketing. Who cares if you offer the greatest product in the world and you know exactly who your audience is and where to find them? They can’t find you. And in the end this is all that matters. There’s always big talk online about web traffic but the traffic that really matters is smart web traffic - the web site traffic that includes those to whom you can easily make a sale because you offer the perfect product for them.

Those who engage in online marketing on their clients’ behalf - a web site optimization firm - understand smart web traffic; it’s what they are always working to generate. This is the point of the search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. Not only is it meant to generate interest by the search engines, it is meant to generate interest among a particular audience. More to come in the next post…

In the last post we explored the potential of businesses to not only stay afloat but differentiate themselves in a crowded online market; enough so that they are able to attract the web site traffic that will allow them to grow their business going forward. As we discussed, there is a two-fold plan that allows for the most success in this regard. The first, obviously, is to make sure that people are able to find your web site at all and this is done by making sure that the search engines are able to find your site. The first part of the plan, therefore, is engaging in online marketing - through search engine optimization (SEO) or pay-per-click (PPC) so that visitors will be able even be able to find you. Qualifying those visitors is best done through the strategic use of keywords - something that is done in both SEO and PPC. The keywords that you choose and are used in your online marketing should speak to your potential audience; should be able to pinpoint your target market because they are using the precise words that used to find exactly your products and service. The better researched the keywords the better chance for your success.

* Phase Two. Getting visitors to your site is only half the battle in online marketing. You need to give them something, once they get there, that makes your site worthy of them continuing to explore your products and services. This means that your site had better be user-friendly, attractive, interesting, and able to deliver the value that is expected by our visitors and potential customers. A web site optimization firm can help you implement and manage a SEO or a PPC campaign but you need to be able to deliver what your customers have come to your site to find.

If the online game was won simply by attracting more people to your site - even if they clicked on it and then almost instantly logged out - then the process of online marketing would be far more simple indeed. This, however, is not how it works because ultimately the point is to attract not only visitors - but qualified visitors - to your website; customers. These are the people who will grow your business - who will help you stand your ground online. But the question remains how to get them there. There is actually a two-fold phase in not only attracting web site traffic in a saturated market but retaining these visitors so that they may actually be converted into customers. This is always the ultimate goal. The first phase is positioning your site so that it may be discovered by your potential customers and this is done through comprehensive online marketing.

* Phase One. Web site owners that want to compete in a crowded market and make sure that their site is found by their potential audience need to make sure that it can be easily searched by the search engines. There are several ways to go about this - the choice of which is determined by what works best for the company. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process by which high rankings on the search engines is achieved organically. This is done by the implementation and management of a strategic SEO campaign that may include the selection of purposeful and relevant keywords, the infusion of those keywords into web site content, the application of a linking strategy, and more. Others may choose pay-per-click (PPC) that allows them to purchase a beneficial position on the search engines. Either plan requires diligence and a commitment to manage the process - to keep the page rankings high and people visiting the site. This is often done most effectively through the use of a web site optimization firm.