Online Marketing for Business Web Sites:
What should we be doing?
© Virginia Lawrence, Ph.D.
As soon as we establish a Web site, we register with the most
important search engines and directories. Many companies then move on
to the next project, considering the site's online marketing to be
complete. But search engine registration is only the foundation of a
good marketing plan. Successful companies build a good foundation and
use that foundation to establish their online marketing program. The
following six steps are crucial:
- Page preparation. Prepare the Web site pages so that every
viewer can understand the goal of the site and so that each page tells the search engines the topic of the page. The non-visible Meta
tags on each page are written to enhance the standing of the pages
in search engines.
- Site registration. Register the site with the critical top ten
search engines and directories, being careful to choose the most
appropriate categories for the site. Register with another batch of specialized directories to obtain wider coverage.
- Strategic linking. Research specialized directories and
complementary sites, then request the site owners to add a link to
the site. The number of links leading to a site has always been
important. Now some of the most influential search engines are using
the number of inbound links as a measure of the importance of a
site. Strategic linking is a marketing activity which should be
ongoing for the life of the site.
- Traffic measurement. Monitor the site logs to determine whether
the traffic is increasing, decreasing, or remaining stable. We want
to keep the traffic increasing or stable at a reasonably high rate. Google Analytics is very helpful in tracking site traffic.
- Site rank evaluation. Audit the site's standing in the most
important search engines. The search engines change their selection
algorithms frequently, and they are constantly indexing new web sites, so a site's standing can change from day to day. If
we find that our ranking is not high enough, we research the
difference between our site and any competing sites which rank above
ours. We find a legitimate way to improve our key words or
description, then we optimize the site specifically for that search engine to increase the site's
ranking.
- Referrer logs. Review the list of referring sites in the logs for
the site. If we find that we never receive visitors who searched on
one particular search engine in the top ten, we optimize the site specifically for that search engine to increase the site's
ranking.
A few marketers have stated that we should re-register every week,
and that sounds like a nice easy solution. However, most search
engines consider repetitive registration of unchanged sites to be
spamming, and weekly registration can get our sites banned from a
search engine. There is no automated solution to attaining and
keeping a good ranking in the search engines. The sensible solution
takes time and attention: attention to site design, Meta tags,
traffic, referrer logs, and search engine standings.
Read more informative articles by the expert
on Web Marketing and Internet Business.
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