Online Presense and Visibility

Your marketing efforts are crucial to keeping prospects in your pipeline, and your online visibility - making it easy for customers and prospects to find you - is at the heart of modern marketing.  Are you doing all you can to leverage your efforts and maximize your exposure in an organic approach?  We emphasize that your marketing efforts are made up of components that add up to a comprehensive approach, and that your online presence is key among those components.  Smart businesses use all facets in a thoughtful, integrated manner.  Here are some tips to help coordinate these efforts, and potentially improve your search engine page rankings. How many of these do you currently use?

• Add your URL to every piece of your business collateral. When you have a website, make sure that every printed piece - business card, brochure, letterhead, presentation folder, postcard, white paper - reminds your clients and prospects of where they can reach you and learn about you.
• Be active in social networking. When you blog, tweet, or contribute to online forums, make sure your business URL is part of your signature.  This gives the public that many more opportunities to visit your site, and contributes to your site's link popularity and search page ranking.
• Update your website. Give people a reason to return to your site by making the content compelling and fresh.  Websites that incorporate content management systems put this kind of control into a business owner's hands, reducing their reliance on technical personnel.
• Use relevant keywords and descriptions. Well designed sites include code visible to search engines called meta tags.  We recommend that business owners review their meta tag key words and description at least every 90 days to account for changing trends, business offerings, and to check in on their competitors.
• Monitor your traffic. How many visitors come to your site daily? Monthly? How long do they stay on your site? Which are your most popular pages? On which page do they exit your site? What search terms are being used to find your site in searches?  You should have this information at your fingertips and respond in an agile fashion to increase traffic and sales. Analytical tools make this possible.
• Trade links. Again, link popularity is an important factor in determining how high your page ranks on a search engine.    Consider incorporating a "Links" page on your site to point back to complimentary sites - trustworthy businesses, organizations or associations to which you belong.
• Monitor your profiles. Aside from your social networking profiles, update any listing your business may have with a professional or community organization so that it includes your business URL.

Remember, this list is provided with an emphasis on a comprehensive organic approach to visibility, and will involve foot work on the part of the site owner or their staff.  Most small to medium size businesses find this to be a less costly method than pay-per-click strategies.