Think Big Blog

In the last post, we talked about the importance of making a good - and fast - impression on those visiting your website. You only have a very short amount of time to hook your audience; you must be able to attract their attention - enough so that they choose to even stay on your site - and then sell them long term with the material that you have to offer. In addition to selling your site to its intended audience you are also charged with gaining the attention of the search engines. After all, it is the engines that will ultimately deliver you with your audience; if you are not able to rank well among the search engines then you may find yourself constantly swimming upstream against a surging Internet tide.

The challenge of SEO professionals for any client is to first deliver a status report - a measure of where the website stands before there can be any plans for its future. A website optimization firm will determine where in the search engine rankings your website currently holds a place and what keywords your potential audience is using to find goods and services just like those that you have to offer.

First keywords are chosen based on relevance and market competitiveness. It is then important that chosen keywords are threaded throughout the website’s content. Make no mistake - content definitely serves two masters online. The search engines are looking for fresh content - that the website is being managed, maintained and updated. Users, of course, are looking for a website that delivers what they need and content helps to sell your business overall. Great online content seamlessly meshes SEO with product and business marketing - keeping on the search engines’ radars and continually providing informative and updated content that sells the user and makes that all-important great impression.

Online marketing has seen its share of trends; the methods to which search engines respond most pointedly. Link building continues to rank in importance but right now, content - fresh content - continues to be the magic ingredient in helping to get rankings and more website traffic as a result. Content is, once again, king in getting websites ranked; search engines want lots of rich, relevant content and they want it now! So how can you compete?

Start with keyword rich, relevant content that will not only get the attention of your search engines but gain the respect and loyalty of your website visitors. Remember, keywords are important - and certainly instrumental to your SEO campaign - but they are only one half of the equation. You want to create content that will effectively market your product and your business in addition to furthering your organic SEO.

Update this content frequently. Stagnant content can kill a website for many reasons. Search engines want to see new and fresh; they want to see activity. Your audience - those who you are targeting as potential customers - want something to sign back in to see. When you are able to deliver on both fronts you are able to achieve success in your online marketing plan.

Consider additional sources of content. Consider integrating pieces of continually updating content into your website itself. A blog that you continually update will satisfy the search engines as well as giving your audience a reason to log on to your site again and again. An online newsletter will also provide you with fresh content as well as updating your visitors on new products, industry news and more.

Staying on top of your content and refreshing as often you can will go a long way towards getting your site noticed online, gaining more website traffic and growing your business as a result.

In the last post we began building our bridge between our targeted web traffic (our customers) and our website. We have identified what we do and what we have to offer, how we differ from the competition, where we stand against the competition in terms of an online search, and what keywords and keywords phrases our potential customers are using to find our products and services online. Now we’re on to:

Step 3. Just because a keyword phrase looks good on paper - and it’s what you think your customers may use in a search - doesn’t mean it holds water in reality or that it will specifically benefit you in any way. Keyword research - thorough keyword research done by a professional search engine optimization (SEO) team - will yield the results you need to move forward. Through keyword research you can determine how competitive a phrase is (i.e. do you have the time, money, and resources to compete on this level) and what phrases remain untapped in terms of SEO. Ultimately it’s determining what is going to give you the best traction on the search engines, raise your online profile, and ultimately connect you to your audience.

Step 4. Integrate your keywords into compelling online content as a part of a greater SEO campaign. Once you have zeroed in on the appropriate keywords - those keyword phrases that are most likely to gain you the best traction on the search engines - a website optimization firm will work with you to integrate these keywords into your website content. Content serves two equally important purposes - it must be engaging enough to gain the interest of your audience and enticing enough to convert visitors into sales, while also including your chosen keywords in order to satisfy the search engines. The inclusion of keyword rich content, however, is a part of the larger SEO picture which will also include on-page SEO-friendly changes and an integrated and comprehensive linking campaign.

In the last post, we talked about how consistency when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO) is what wins in the end; the continuous work to keep a site on the radar of the search engines and, ultimately, their intended audience. Good, solid, consistent effort is what wins every time. Unfortunately, most business owners who are operating a website to boot don’t have the time to focus on generating more website traffic each and every day; that is why they turn to a website optimization firm - a team that will act as their online marketing arm on a day to day basis. It is the singular focus of the SEO team to implement a plan and continuously work that plan. It’s like riding a bike. If you stop pedaling, you may coast for awhile but eventually you will come to a stop. A strong website optimization firm does the pedaling for your website so that you always maintain your momentum - you always remain strong and consistent in your message and your purpose.

We already talked about some components of a strong search engine optimization plan including identifying your audience and what keywords are being used online by people to find the services and products that you offer. Keyword research is a huge part of being successful through organic SEO. Once you determine what keywords are being used by your audience and what keywords and phrases will benefit you the most, an online marketing company will:

Integrate keywords throughout your online content.

Implement and continually manage a strategic linking campaign that utilizes the chosen keywords.

Manage your campaign from day to day. Like anything else, an online marketing campaign such as organic SEO must be continually scrutinized and adjusted to changing market trends as well as other factors. A solid SEO team is put in place to help manage your campaign every step of the way.

Most of us will often hear that it’s the tortoise that wins the race - the slow, the steady, the consistent; and surely many of us have had cause to see that first hand in our own lives. It’s the losing one pound a week that keeps the weight off in the end, it’s remaining consistent and unfettered that allows us to emerge victorious in whatever our pursuit; no get rich quick, no magic pill, no secret formula - just doing the work day in and day out. This is very much the case when it comes to organic SEO. There is no tactic that will give you longer lasting results - consistent results - than consistently working the search engine optimization of your website.

This is the reason that companies turn to a website optimization firm to help build their website traffic and expand their business; because of the daily work that it takes to not only get a site to the front of the search engine results pages but keep them there consistently. Each piece of an organic SEO campaign is important and must be worked consistently; a website optimization firm offers the benefit of their consistency and their singularly focused drive and management. A company offering reputable SEO services will:

Examine the intricacies of your business. Who is your audience? What sets you apart from the competition?

Determine how your audience is finding you - or your competition - online. What keywords and keyword phrases are people using to find products and services like what you offer? What are the most competitive phrases? How often are they being used?

Determine what keywords and keyword phrases will serve you best based upon that research. Keyword research - thorough research - is crucial to good SEO. The research will help determine what phrases you should be using to attract your audience.

More in the next post…

Generating website traffic is - for websites - the obvious goal in their online marketing but it is much more than that; it is finding more website traffic among their own unique audience - those that will ultimately have an interest in what the website has to offer. Conversion as well as traffic is the goal of any website so any online marketing programs that are considered should work towards those objectives. In other words, it is one thing to get people to stop and check out your site, and quite another to attract those people who are more than tire kickers; who are there because they have a real interest in your services and can be swayed to eventually become a customer.

Those who are just embarking on their campaign of online marketing may feel encouraged to do anything and everything to simply spike traffic but in the long run it’s the tailored marketing efforts that will increase your bottom line as well as the traffic to your site. To this end, working with a reputable website optimization firm that can offer guidance through pay per click and search engine optimization will enhance your site and ready it for the appropriate audience. But first you need to find your audience.

A website optimization firm will work with you to identify your online audience - those who are interested in your products and services. What keywords and keyword phrases are they using to find you or companies like yours? These are the keywords that form the backbone of your online marketing campaign; that will form a bridge directly between your website and your online audience.

Working with SEO services allows companies to really fully explore the ways in which an audience may find them online and to tailor their message to find that audience.

Online marketing has become the new buzz words of the Internet; something that a whole host of companies profess to know how to do and something that we have been trained to fear in terms of not having “enough” of it - a sure sign, according to those in the know, that our online business will fail. The truth is that online businesses count on a lot of factors to realize success. Having the fantastic website and the airtight business plan and the phenomenal products and services are - quite frankly - only pieces in a much larger puzzle. We do need online marketing insomuch as we need to be able to build the appropriate bridge for our customers to find our websites. This is, surprisingly, the one step that so many people leave out of their business plans. You can build it but it doesn’t mean that they will come.

So what does online marketing mean and how does this help you build your business? In terms of getting people - and by people we mean qualified, targeted web traffic - to your site, online marketing is the means by which you make your site known and attract this traffic. In some cases this is a well constructed and equally well managed pay per click (PPC) campaign that allows your site to inhabit the prime locations on a search engine for a price. In other cases this is done through an organic search engine optimization (SEO) campaign that - when done well - will help you reach the prime locations of the search engines on your own, without the paid spot.

Results found through organic SEO campaigns are directly proportionate to the amount of work put into the campaign which is why so many rightfully turn to a professional online marketing and website optimization firm to take the reigns. More in the next post…

In the last post we talked about the goal of online marketing - to effectively cut through the hundreds of messages we receive on a given day and reach our targeted audience with just the right message. Challenging? Yes. However, with the right SEO company on your side you are able to cut through the clutter with precision and deliver the appropriate message to those who could likely be your next customer. With online marketing, generating more website traffic is important but, as we discussed, it’s only one piece of the puzzle; because unless this web traffic is interested in what you have to offer, then ultimately the traffic doesn’t do you much good. As we’ve already discussed, one of the ways to turn traffic into targeted web traffic is to make sure that the keywords being used in an SEO campaign are appropriate. A professional website optimization firm will do the research necessary to determine what keywords your potential audience will use to find you; important for making sure that people will search for you most appropriately and those who want to find you will find you.

Some other pieces of online marketing include:

Strategic linking. Making sure that people can find you and that the search engines are taking notice also includes making sure that you have inbound linking from relevant and reputable websites.

Establishing expertise. The world of online marketing is as much about public relations as anything else. Establish you expertise and standing in the industry by distributing press releases about company news, writing and publishing informational pieces about your industry in general, and getting your name and website out there in a variety of ways. Professional SEO services will not only help orchestrate the plan but manage these efforts and help you reach the targeted web traffic you seek.

In the last post we talked about how important marketing is for a website as well as a traditional company. Online, website owners are concerned about generating a buzz around their site and around their business as a whole; a buzz that can be created by implementing a sound strategy that includes a variety of different marketing methods. In the last post, we talked about the first - and most effective - method of getting attention online. That involves hiring a website optimization firm to implement an organic SEO campaign. More than anything, by hiring professionals you are ensuring that someone is always focused on your website rankings and that your name is out there in front of the appropriate audience. There are other avenues to explore as well, including:

Promotion through Ongoing News - Promoting a company through the distribution of ongoing press releases is an effective way to continually keep people informed and the company’s name in front of an online audience. By optimizing the press releases with the inclusion of keywords you can further ensure that your rankings will continue to increase and hold their own over time.

Publishing of Additional Information - One of the great ways to establish credibility online is to position yourself as an expert in a particular subject matter. Consider the ways in which you can promote your expertise in your industry; publish a variety of articles and information in which your audience may be interested. Keep the information coming and consider the many potential sites where you can post that information - look for your audience in expected - and unexpected locations.

Keeping Things Fresh - Remember that ultimately the reason that people stay on your site is because they find the products and information that they are looking for; give them what they came for and you’ll keep them on your site. Offer information, updated products, fresh content, and more reasons to visit.

One of the rules of public relations that we hear time and time again is that even bad news is good news. In other words, no matter what context you get your name out there, it’s still getting your name out there. That may be true to a certain extent; larger corporations can afford to have people talking about them even if it’s not in the most positive light, but for the rest of us we would much rather have our company connected with good things. If we’re going to get people’s attention we sure hope it’s in a positive manner. This is why companies of all kinds - and especially as they promote their online presence - strive to generate a buzz around their products and services; something that can be done through online marketing as well as it can be done through traditional public relations practices.

Online marketing, just like traditional marketing, is all about generating that buzz. Online, however, success is manifested through qualified website traffic. If you get people talking about you - specifically your intended audience - you will inevitably increase website traffic and grow your overall business. So how do you create a buzz around your website and get the attention of your intended audience?

Well-Coordinated SEO - Search engine optimization handled professionally through a website optimization firm can do a lot to get the name of a company out there in front of an audience that not only is interested but is in the market for the products and services that the site offers. Organic SEO is undertaken through the choosing of appropriate keywords that will likely be used in a search; as well as through strategic linking and a variety of other SEO practices. An added benefit of using a website optimization firm is that they will continue to manage the campaign so that website traffic is maintained and that changes and additions to the campaign can be handled on the spot.

More in the next post…