Drive Traffic to Your Website

Building a business requires marketing savvy and a general understanding of how business development, smart marketing campaigns, search engine optimization to enhance the performance of any website and solid public relations can impact the recognition, perception and overall growth of any business. According to the Business Marketing Association, there are several critical times during a customer’s relationship where a decision is made – by the customer – to continue or discontinue interacting with a company. This may be the first bill, a customer service call, a retail experience, a Web site - any event that helps clarify the relationship with a particular brand, product, or service. These moments are called "moments of truth" – and the way a business presents itself at these “moments of truth” is significant.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

A component of a company’s marketing and public relations strategy is SEO. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of methods and practices aimed at enhancing the ranking of a website in search engine listings. Using search engines, visitors can locate sites in a number of different ways, including paid-for advertisements in the search engine results pages, third parties who are listed in the search engines, or even "organic" listings - the results the search engines present users. SEO is primarily concerned with improving the visibility of a site in the organic search results.

What does SEO have to do with getting more traffic to a website?
High rankings in the organic search results can provide targeted traffic for a site. Obtaining that traffic by other means can potentially be expensive. For competitive terms, the cost per click can run several dollars, or more, when pay per click advertising or banner advertising are used. For even moderately competitive terms the cost can range from a few cents to several tens of dollars per visitor. Given those costs, it often makes sense for site owners to optimize their sites for organic search.

Why does a small business need to be concerned with SEO?
Any complete marketing plan that has an online component should include search engine placement and keyword-related marketing as an integral portion of it, as these can account for 85 to 95 percent of a websites overall Web traffic. To successfully rank highly in search engines, the words on your Web pages should be a major investment in your search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. The top ranking sites get all the clicks, so unless your SEO expenditure can get you into those top rankings, your performance will lag. Estimates are that the top ranking listing gets 40% of clicks, the second spot 20 percent and the third captures 10 percent of all viewers. The rest get a few percent each.

Is SEO something that a small business should consider?
To successfully rank high in today's popular search engines, all businesses - regardless of size - need to put the right words on their Web pages. The presentation of a company's website, from the content on the homepage to the metatags throughout the site, should never be taken lightly because it could be the difference between being found, or not being found, by prospective clients, partners, even investors. It's imperative to think of the search engine optimization process as a long-term investment for your site, so here are some tips to help you invest in your future success:

• Thoroughly research your keyword phrases, keyword research is the absolute key to everything that is search marketing. Make sure your site is not made up of graphics alone, as these cannot be read by the search engine spiders.Be sure to use natural, easy-to-understand language that conveys the message of your website and includes keyword phrases you'd like your site to rank highly for.Make sure your Title tags and link anchor text all match with the visible content on the page.
• Write attention-grabbing tag lines, written using H1 or H2 tags. Search engines like Google give additional importance to title tags in bold H1 or H2 tags.

Why do small businesses need to worry about SEO?
The exercise of writing copy that is search engine optimized is a critical component in the marketing campaign of any business - and it is not a component that should be overlooked. Making sure that keywords are well represented in website copy is not a difficult task - and the benefits can be immeasurable for the recognition factor of a small business.

How do search engines, like Google, find a small business?
This question is really about how Google updates its index. This is an extremely broad topic, but there are some key points that can be helpful knowledge for any small business looking to enhance its website for better search engine performance. Every month, Google takes a variety of very technical steps to ensure its database is the most relevant and of the highest quality. In order to obtain the best Google rankings early in search engine optimization campaigns, it is important to take all the necessary steps before and carefully plan ahead. In respect to non-fee search engine submissions, Google happens to be one of the very few left. It's also one of the earliest to include it in its database. Google, and various leading search engines scouring the Internet every minute of the day, do not have a lot to work with when trying to figure out which sites show in their list for any given keyword search. Considering this, and he millions upon millions of web pages out there today, it's actually remarkable how relevant most search results tend to be - given the sheer volume of pages on the Internet.

What else is involved in a successful SEO campaign?
Successful SEO campaigns, by necessity, involve marketing, sales, and IT. An SEO campaign for any business will only be truly successful if marketing, sales and IT are interfacing to ensure a website is being optimized to the highest levels of its search engine performance potential. Any SEO expert will advise that marketing needs to be done to find out what types of offers and initiatives are working offline to help translate them effectively online. The marketing professional should coordinate with sales to identify the types of leads that are most valuable so that a website can effectively target the right people in the keyphrase selection process. And, finally, any SEO expert will advise that marketing and sales need to work closely with IT to determine any technical limitations to the SEO recommendations, learn of any past initiatives based on a technical approach, and get the final optimization schemes implemented on the website. While it's not impossible for a company to undertake a major SEO campaign internally, it's always smart to consult a professional SEO advisor for best practices and direction.