Note: this entry is part of a series about using marketing to generate leads and enhance brand awareness. See our Sales & Marketing topic.
Imagine you have the greatest store in the world and you're selling a unique product or services. However, your store is located in the middle of the forrest....
Imagine you have the greatest store in the world and you’re selling a unique product or service. Your facility is beautiful and your staff is welcoming and friendly. However, your store is located in the middle of the forest and there is literally no road, path, river or any method of transportation for someone to reach your store. Furthermore, you have no doorway or windows to get into you store. It kind of defeats the purpose of having a store, right?
Having a website without a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy is like having a store with no entrance.
You invest a lot of resources into making a good website. You may have worked internally or with an agency on the design and content. You’ve selected graphics and the color scheme, along with some copy. But this still isn’t enough to make a successful website.
You have to get found by your potential targets - and that’s where SEO comes in. The practice of SEO is using techniques to help your website get found and rank higher on search engine sites like Google, Bing and Yahoo.
In today’s society where people are dependent on technology, getting found by Google is critical to your online marketing strategy. As an exercise, jot down on a piece of paper every time you have a question or need more information on a topic. After that, make a mark in blue for every time you use Google (or comparable search engine) as your go-to tool to answer your question or find your info. Our guess is that you’re going to see a lot of blue on your paper.
Your target audience is no different. When your prospects are typing in key terms and phrases in search engines, you want your website to rank higher than your competitor’s.
While SEO is very technical and a long-term project, here is an SEO 101 run-down of some key factors:
Please note: search engines alter the factors that impact your ranking. The aforementioned factors are meant to provide you with an introductory understanding of SEO.
Want to learn more about SEO? Leave a comment and we’ll explore a particular topic in a future blog entry!
In Part 6 of the series, we’ll explore E-mail Marketing!