Usually one of the first questions clients ask when I start working with them is “how can I be number one on Google”. How then, can I say that search engine optimization (SEO) is the very LAST thing you need to worry about in the game of internet marketing?
“Getting a high ranking for popular keywords on search engines is only useful if your site has all of the necessary systems in place to take full advantage of the opportunity being presented”Allow me to illustrate. Imagine that you are opening a new restaurant, and you spend thousands on marketing and advertising – you take out radio and tv ads, a full page spread in the national daily newspaper advertising your new restaurant and the great opening specials you have. Opening night comes, people respond in the hundreds to your promotions, there’s just one problem… you weren’t ready to cater for hundreds. Your new staff are not confident in their training and make mistakes all night, taking orders to wrong tables, and forgetting some all together. You payment system hasn’t been tested and it doesn’t cope with billing. People wait more than an hour for their food, if they get it and thousands of dollars walk out the door in unpaid bills. Worse than all that, all those people you spent money getting in the door walk right out of it, never to return. Each one tells of their terrible experience the next day to their friends at work. The bad publicity spreads like a virus and within weeks you are wondering what went wrong.
What is wrong with this scenario?
Getting a high ranking for popular keywords on search engines is only useful if your site has all of the necessary systems in place to take full advantage of the opportunity being presented. You have probably experienced this for yourself when searching online, a process that can often be frustrating. You may search a topic, and click on the first site that comes up. If that site is not what you are looking for, or doesn’t appeal to you, you are hitting the ‘back’ button within seconds, moving onto another site.
Further, a week later when you try out the same search, it is likely that all the sites you have already visited are highlighted, your computer has registered that you have already been there. Will you click on that link again? Probably not! Because you already know that you have been there and not found what you were looking for.
It is imperative that if you can get someone to visit your site, you want them to find it useful and appealing. You want them to stay, check out all of your offerings, and more than that, have some way of collecting their information so that you can market to them.
Things you need to implement before commencing an SEO campaign may include:
A well presented, professional and functional website.
Relevant, useful information about your field or industry. Something to hold their attention and show that you are knowledgeable in your industry.
In depth content to make you stand out from all the other millions of sites in competition with you.
Detailed information about your company, products and multiple methods of contact.
A free offer in exchange for a prospects permission to market to them, such as a newsletter, competition, special offer or survey.
A way for prospects and customers to provide feedback, comments and interact with you on a personal level.
If relevant to your business, a way for customers to view your products and make secure, automated purchases.
Having such strategies in place on your site will enable to you appeal to prospective customers, hold their attention, and collect their contact details for later promotions and interaction. It is at this level of preparation that effective SEO can turn your traffic into revenue.
For more information about improving your online communications, contact us –
info@thompsonmarketing.com.au
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