Does your business have an active digital pulse? Or is it in need of a pacemaker? Important questions. Here is another … how do your site visitors and potential customers view your site?
A Website presence has become standard operating procedure for any business seeking to reach a wider audience, enhance marketing and advertising efforts, stretch marketing budgets, make strategic affiliations, or network and interact on a national or global scale. Once your business site has been designed, built and set in motion, the fun begins. And the name of this game is SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
SEO is a vital part of Website marketing. Think of it as the foundation on which to build your promotion and advertising campaigns. Without effective SEO, your site will be buried in the obscurity of distant search engine listings. With a good SEO foundation and practices, your site will gain important rank position in the big search engines and your customers, new and old, will find you with minimal searching.
As good as rank position may sound, keep in mind that the search industry is always evolving, and listings/rankings have to be watched and worked regularly. Online marketing and SEO experts all agree that submitting a site to search engines for listing is only the beginning.
Once the Meta data has been completed (the development and placement of keywords in the HTML Meta tags on your site page files), you can begin a regular marketing plan. Part of this plan should include staying aware of any changes that the major search players are going through.
A solid marketing plan will be different things to different people. There are low cost Web-only strategies that utilize press releases, link or banner exchanges, affiliate programs and providing free content, such as e-books or industry information. These can take a little longer to get results, so where money is saved, time involvement becomes crucial. For faster results, there are pay-per-click programs and various online paid advertising. And for those businesses that seek local and offline clientele, there are magazine, newspaper, radio and TV ads. But whatever the methods chosen, all marketing comes back to your Website. The ideal scenario allows you to keep close and accurate track of all your efforts, know the success or failure of campaigns, and learn user response through the activity on your Website. Too many businesses underutilize their Websites, wasting a highly valuable tool.
Basically there are two avenues of marketing, and they should both lead back to your Website -- site-specific online advertising, and outside advertising that brings people to your site. Therefore, successful marketing requires that you really know your site visitors.
What do your potential customers see when they visit your Website? What invites them to move through your site? What compels them to make a purchase, or sign up for the newsletter? To be successful with your marketing, you MUST know your audience.
It really is not as difficult as it sounds. With the growing awareness of Web analytics, business owners are finding that their site traffic data can yield valuable and detailed data on their visitors' habits, usage… and their response to advertising.
Web analytics reports, until very recently, were generated from a cumbersome, time-consuming log-based system that was very difficult to understand by anyone who was not tech-savvy. Many sites still labor through this method for their data reports. However, this is no longer necessary.
Today's analytics and site tracking services are striving to be more useful and available. As with anything on the Internet, it either evolves or disappears. Web analytics have become recognized as a critical business component and, as a result, we are seeing the evolution of a new age heading toward a warmer, more sociable and approachable Web analytics industry.
Owning a business today means you must have an online presence. It is a valuable tool, too often overlooked. With some good, solid SEO, you have a firm marketing foundation for your business; a global calling card. With an aggressive marketing and advertising strategy, you will have a tool to enhance your company's bottom line. And with this next generation of analytics, you have all the power you need to turn your Website into a one-stop marketing center, where you can keep your virtual fingers on the vivid pulse of your business ad campaigns, your visitors, your customers and your success.
Cherie' Davidson is contracted copywriter and site content editor for VisiStat, an energetic young company leading the next generation of "friendlier" Website analysis services. VisiStat is the first to make analytics reports speak directly to the site and business owner, and online marketer, in a language that is easily understood and used. It offers a unique type of reporting that provides maximum feedback for marketing and advertising campaigns. Learn more about VisiStat at http://www.visistat.com or contact Cherie at cherie@visistat.com.
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