Archive for: March 2009

Most small businesses appreciate marketing strategies that are low-cost or no-cost, especially in today’s unpredictable economy. Online marketing channels such as web sites, e-newsletters, email campaigns, and internet advertising are already being used by small businesses to save money on marketing, since these tend to be much less expensive than some older, more traditional methods. But with the popularity of sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn, small businesses are finding yet another marketing strategy that not only saves them money, but is also very effective in getting the attention of customers and the search engines alike – and that strategy is social networking.

1. Keep Customer Mindshare
   It used to be that small businesses purchased newspaper or magazine ads, and used billboards, radio ads, or direct mail campaigns to keep their name in front of customers and potential customers. But today, these methods have not only become very expensive, they also lack the flexibility necessary to target audiences with a message meant exclusively for them.

   Today, customers are using the web everyday. They use Google to find information, Facebook to share information with their friends, Twitter to stay in touch with others during the day, and they listen to downloaded podcasts on their iPods. By having a solid social networking presence, a small business can easily meet the needs of its customers; whether it’s announcing relevant news in a Facebook profile, broadcasting special offers to followers on Twitter, or showing up at the top of the search engine listings so customers click on their web site link first (before visiting any competitors’ sites!).

2. Develop Customer Relationships (and Loyalty!)
   Today’s customers really do expect some level of online interaction with your company; whether they are using your company’s blog (or other related blogs), following your Tweets (on Twitter), writing product reviews on sites like Amazon.com, or posting questions and information on sites like LinkedIn. The more you can provide customers with a way to interact with your business, the more supported they feel, and the more positive their experience and attitude becomes. Be sure to also follow the “conversation” by using tools like Google Alerts to monitor how your business is being presented and talked about on the web.
3. Build Inbound Links
   Building organic inbound links to your web site is the most effective way to improve your rankings in the search engines, especially in Google. Most social networking profiles allow you to include links to your web site, which then become new inbound links that point to your site. Depending on the social networking site, you can sometimes use your keywords as anchor text in your profile, and direct these links to specific (optimized) landing pages on your web site. Not only will these organic links help you gain points with the search engines, they can also help drive sales and boost conversion rates by bringing users directly to the landing pages on your web site.
4. Increase Visits to Your Web Site
   It’s pretty logical – the more exposure your business has on social networking sites, the more customers and potential customers have an opportunity to click on links to your web site. If you can also provide good quality content, useful information, and other helpful resources in your profiles, you can often create enough interest (or maybe curiosity) to get users to visit your web site – users who would not have otherwise had any exposure to your business. Just make sure that you create specific landing pages on your web site that are relevant to your social networking visitors, rather than just sending them to your home page.
5. Rank Higher in the Search Engines
   By providing multiple sources of quality, indexable content on various social networking sites on the web, your online visibility is expanded, giving the search engines more content to discover. Search engines routinely index not just web pages, but also blogs, images and photos, video, wiki entries, podcasts, and social networking profiles. When you provide great content in a variety of forms and in a variety of places, you improve your chances of getting noticed (and ranked higher) by the search engines.

As social networking continues to gain in popularity, small businesses are finding ways to take advantage of it to connect and communicate with customers. In the past, reaching customers was often an interruption – a commercial on TV, an ad in the middle of a magazine story, or a billboard on the side of the highway. But social networking provides a way to interact with customers and engage in a two-way conversation with them. Of all the marketing strategies available to small businesses today, social networking seems to provide some impressive benefits for little or no cost, which may be the greatest benefit of all.

We are very pleased to announce that we have just completed a new whitepaper explaining the SEO building blocks that small businesses must use to be successful with their search engine optimization efforts. The whitepaper is titled “The Building Blocks of SEO for Small Business: What it Takes to Be Found Online” and is available for download now.

The whitepaper discusses the role of keyword research, the internal tasks and objectives necessary for optimization, and the external factors that make a difference in getting the search engines to find and index your web site. The whitepaper also offers concrete examples of these building blocks and offers suggestions for strategies you can use to make your optimization efforts more successful.

You can request the whitepaper here, or you can send us an email to request a copy be emailed to you.

GET THE WHITEPAPER >>

Today, most consumers check out a company’s web site first – way before they consider making a purchase or contacting a business for more information. It’s often the first encounter they have with the company, and can result in them making snap judgments about the company and whether it’s credible or desirable to do business with. These types of judgments are based solely on their impression of – and experience on – the company’s web site.

Making a great first impression and establishing credibility are vital to turning web visitors into paying customers, so it’s important to avoid the web mistakes that can drive them away, rather than drawing them in.

Here are five common mistakes that small businesses make with their web sites, so be sure you site isn’t guilty of any of these offenses!

1. Not updating your web site.
   Let’s face it, there’s not much point in a visitor coming to your company’s web site if it is outdated, uses old technology, or never gets new information added. There are millions of web sites to choose from, so why would a user want to spend time on a site that isn’t useful and that you don’t seem to really care about? Today’s users have very high expectations, and if you don’t meet them, they will simply move on to a site that does.
2. Skipping SEO.
   How are customers going to find you if your site doesn’t come up in the search engines? Even if you have the best web site ever built, it’s not doing your business much good or generating new leads for you if customers can’t find it. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a necessary step if you want web visitors to find and visit your site, so don’t put it off. It’s a great investment in your business and helps you leverage the investment you’ve already made in building your web site in the first place.
3. Using Flash-based or image-based architecture.
   This is a big issue for small businesses that have already been talked into creating a Flash-based or image-based web site. These sites are typically more expensive to build and maintain, nearly impossible to update in-house, and are not WC3 (World Wide Web Consortium) compliant for accessibility. They are also invisible to the search engines, which means you cannot implement the SEO techniques necessary to get your site read and indexed in the search engine databases. The best thing to do with a Flash or image-based site is to convert it to a standards-based web site as soon as you possibly can.
4. Talking too much about the company and not focusing on the customer.
   Web visitors do not want to read about how great your company is, how many awards you have won, or how your grandpa taught you about the family business. They want to hear how your company can help them solve their problems, and what the benefits will be (for them) if they decide to do business with you. Don’t go on and on about yourself – instead, focus on your customers’ needs and how you can improve their lives, jobs, families, or whatever it is that you solve for your customers. Limit the company bragging to a separate “About the Company” page, so users can decide to read about it only if they are interested in doing so.
5. Using a “splash” page or “enter here” page before displaying the actual web site.
   Few things are as frustrating to web visitors as wasting time trying to access the information they are looking for. If you display a splash page (or worse, a Flash intro!) before users can access any useful information, you are making them take an unnecessary extra step just to enter your site. Today’s users are extremely time-sensitive and impatient, and studies have shown that when faced with a splash page, Flash intro, or “enter here” link, they would rather click on the browser’s “Back” button than take that extra step or wait any longer to access information. The goal should be to make it as easy as possible for your visitors to get to the information they are looking for, not create barriers to it. The same principle applies to graphics-heavy pages that take too long to download – users simply won’t wait (plus these pages are invisible to search engines, since search engines cannot read Flash files or images).

Your web site communicates with more than just the text on the page; the site as a whole tells visitors a lot about your business. But you need to be careful that the message your site sends to visitors is an accurate one. By avoiding these five web mistakes, you can also avoid sending an unintentional message that your business is behind the times, doesn’t have the time or resources necessary to maintain your site, or that you don’t care about the impression you make to the world.