With small business marketing and the internet the first thing a business will need is a well optimized website. Internet marketing for small business relies on a marketing plan and the website is the foundation of the plan. The website must be optimized for related keywords or phrases someone would use to find a business with. For some businesses a new website may be needed or an existing website will need to be tweaked.
If a website is more than a few years old it will definitely need some updating. With today’s web savvy population an outdated site will stand out for all the wrong reasons. With small business marketing the website is the first point of contact. The website or technically the web page, has to have a compelling message to grab the attention of the visitor. A website will have a half a second or less to say “HEY, LOOK HERE” (shouting intended).
Internet marketing for small business if done well can reward the business owner with an almost unlimited supply of new customers. If the search engines find a webpage with relevant content for a search term then the website that that page is on can gain first page placement in the search engine. The first page can receive over 90% of the search traffic for a term or keyword. We’ll talk about keywords more in a minute. The thing is, a website can dominate one page with more than one listing while showing up for multiple phrases on multiple pages. Depending on the term or keyword, there can be hundreds if not thousands of inquires for the term or phrase.
If you are a small business owner and you are not sure about your site talk to a SEM (search engine marketing) specialist not a website designer and here is why. Building a website is a technical function and a skilled designer can knock out a site pretty quick these days. Designers are now hiring SEM specialists to enhance their client’s web marketing needs. This is not to say that all designers don’t understand marketing or optimizing a website. You just want to make sure of the direction of YOUR marketing before designing the site
The SEM specialist will take the time to learn about you and your business in order to come up with a marketing plan that, number one fits a budget and is workable. A search marketing campaign follows a plan and the plan should have a way to measure the results. The technical function of building a site should come only after a solid course of action has been determined. The marketing plan can be put together in a few days after an initial meeting with a SEM specialist.
The SEM marketer needs to research your business to find a list of keywords that your best customer would use to find you on the internet. After a discussion with you and a review of the potential of the keywords, is when the website would be looked at. The Website should have one goal only and that is to compel visitors to take an action. The action can be as simple as to leave an e-mail address while requesting more information, make a purchase, book an appointment or call the business direct. Any one of these actions is called a conversion. Conversions are the goal.
When looking for someone or a company to work with on SEM for your business you will also hear about SEO which stands for Search Engine Optimization. If you look up seo or SEM at Wikipedia you’ll get similar definitions. Suffice to say Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization go hand in hand. In this article I’m addressing natural or organic traffic, there is a lot more that the seo/SEM specialist will take into consideration when organizing a plan for a business. SEM and SEO best practices overlap.
To get started marketing your business on the internet get a hold of a SEM/seo specialist. And I also want to mention that you shouldn’t get too hung up about speaking to someone that says they are a specialist for your industry. Smart businesses look outside their industry for ideas and inspiration all the time. With seo and SEM you are looking for someone that understands what it takes to get a website to the top of the search engines. Looking at a specialist that only works within one industry may result in a myopic solution. The search engines reward uniqueness, this is one time when doing what everyone else in your industry is doing may not be the right thing for your business future.
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