Prospective clients often express a lot of frustration.

“We have a beautiful web site. We spent a lot of money on it.   But we aren’t getting many customers who say they find us on the web.”

If you have a beautiful web site that you’re very proud of, you should make sure it’s being seen by people other than your current customers, family and friends.

Years ago, before there were millions of sites on very similar topic competing for the attention of people on the web, Search Engine Optimization was much less necessary, and much less complicated.

Given the millions of sites on the Internet, that isn’t going to happen just because you’ve bought a nice domain name and put some money into a good-looking web site.  That’s like installing a great phone system and expecting customers to randomly dial numbers until they reach you and start buying your products and services.

SEO is not quite as simple as buying an ad in the telephone directory, but it’s the same principle.

Of course you CAN do “simply buy an ad,” using paid listings.  (also called Pay Per Click, PPC, Google Ad Words, Sponsored Site Listings, and other services.)  We recommend paid listings for very specific, short-term objectives.   If you have an event coming up and you need to get the word out quickly, you can have a paid listing campaign start this afternoon that will get you good results.   But it will also cost somewhere from seventy-five cents to over twelve dollars a click, depending on the keywords you choose.

For your long-term, sustainable advertising, we recommend making your site as attractive to the search engines as possible so they list it without charge.  This involves a variety of techniques, some are common-sense and some  are quite technical.

Here are a few of the many common-sense techniques

  • Think like a prospective customer. What words is your customer likely to type into Google or Bing when he needs the particular product or service that your company offers?   Those words are a often a great starting point. Make sure you use those key words and phrases on your web site, particularly in page titles and image tags.
  • Publish material that shows your expertise.  If you have published  a lot of material related to your topic on your website, and your competitor has only a page or two, the search engines are likely to “conclude” that your site is a better, more authoritative source of information on that topic.   All other things being equal, search engines will list your site first.
  • Publish a variety of media.  Some people search the web for articles on a particular topic they’re interested in, others will search for photos, video, or audio such as podcasts.  Everybody has a preference.  A variety of materials on your web site, (besides the point above about having more material) gives search engines more opportunities to show your materials to prospective visitors.
  • Publish frequently.  Search engines want to provide visitors with the best, most recent information available on the topic being searched for.   So even if you published an article on a similar topic six months ago, your competitor that posted an article yesterday is more likely to be favored by search engines at the moment. (Again, all things being equal.)

There are many other factors that go into the search algorithms.  Among them are preferred length of titles, preferred structure of metadata, preferred keyword density, post length, link density and structure, and so on. There are entire conferences of nerds that take place over several days that focus on the nuances of search technology, ethics, culture, future developments and so on.  We use two separate software packages, (HubSpot and SEOMoz)  two different professional organizations (American Writers and Artists International AWAI and Glazer-Kennedy Insider Circle GKIC) with their books and webinars to keep up with this technology.  We work on our client’s sites month-in and month-out to ensure that they continue to get good results.  Why the constant effort?

  1. Because it’s a cost-effective way to help new customers find you when they need you.   Having customers find you on Google, Yahoo or Bing brings a steady stream of new customers exactly when they’re looking for your product or service, as opposed to an advertisement or trade show which might catch them at the wrong time in their buying cycle.
  2. Because their competitors could hire an SEO company as well.  Smart competitors are always changing the way they do things.  We want to be the second to know if one of our client’s competitors have employed an SEO strategy. That allows us to respond and stay ahead of the game.
  3. Because the search engines keep changing the game. Search engines are run by people who spend all day, every day plotting ways to get around the crazy tricks people play to get to the top of the search engines.  People use duplicate content, stolen content,  “article spinning” or software that creates multiple copies of the same article to make it look like original content; or “link farms,” which are automated reciprocal link exchanges (you leave a link on my site and I’ll leave a link on your site even though they have nothing in the world to do with each other.)    The key thing to know about these automated, “easy”  tactics, some of which are sometimes called “black hat SEO,” or playing tricks on the search engines, is that if a machine has done it, a machine can detect it.

As the search engines compete with one another to serve the best, most current, most authoritative content to their visitors, you know they are investing more in technology than a company for whom SEO is a sideline.   Tricks and fakery can work for a short time, but the search engines have invested a lot more time and money in their reputation than most of the clients we counsel who have been tempted to try such tactics.   Sites can be dropped from the search engines just as quickly for violating the “ethics” of the search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo,etc.)

Are you frustrated with how many customers are NOT finding you on the web?

Our Marketing Flight Plan includes a Search Engine Analysis, as well as a competitive analysis, that you will find enlightening.

For many, it’s also the first step toward a dramatic increase sales results. We have three service levels for working with clients – the Light Aircraft Program, for those who are fully-staffed and just need some pointers and coaching for optimal results.  The Turbo-Prop Program is a collaborative relationship where we provide great marketing materials and automation to round out an excellent sales and marketing system, and our Business Jet Program, which is our white-glove, full-service marketing program for companies that want to spend more of their time serving customers and contract with us to focus on bringing them new ones in the door and old ones back. Read more about our service levels here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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