Building Inroads with SEO 9

Getting listed high on the Search Engine Rankings (SER) is the primary concern of people these days. It is one thing to have a web site, but if no one can find it then it is pretty useless. Think of it like building a shop in the middle of the desert. Typically, a company builds a web site and then tries to draw people to it, much like building the shop and then having to build a few roads through the desert. But, then you also have to get people to drive down the roads. So, it’s a three step process, really:

1. The first step is to build the web site with as much as you can to attract customers once they are there. In today’s world, we don’t want to build too much confusion in the site. Make it simple so the visitor to your site can find what they want quickly. People don’t read much anymore, so don’t put too much reading in there. It should be interesting, graphic, and compelling enough to stick around and find out more.  If people stick around, they will read more, so don’t neglect to provide the reading material in the sub-pages of your site so that those who want to find information can find it quickly.
2. Secondly, you have to build the inroads. This is the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) you hear talked about so often. But it’s not just optimizing the site for Search Engines. There has to be a general effort toward SEA (Search Engine Awareness). Search Engines have robots or spiders that crawl the web looking for data. They categorize data and thus categorize your web site based on the content and data they find. Optimizing the site for insuring your site is categorized in the correct searches is the SEO part and requires understanding of where you want to position yourself. Positioning is another part of this, but really requires a study of your potential consumers and the consumer market from a demographic as well as psychographic standpoint. That’s a whole study in itself and should be commissioned at some point in order to fully understand your target and positioning. However, if you are involved extensively in your product and thus understand intuitively your target market, you might forgo that if you wish. Don’t underestimate the importance of a Market Research Study, though, it can be invaluable and may provide you information you never even thought of.  The SEO, therefore, needs to be geared toward the target market. That’s not enough to complete the inroad, however. You have to ensure this data is dynamic, i.e. changes regularly. This builds SEA in to the search engine robots. The robots find a change in data and then have to re-address the page which, in turn, makes it pop-to the top again, much like on Facebook where the latest posts move to the top. Of course, the SEO must work together with the SEA for optimal exposure.
3. Finally, you need to develop some incentive to go down the road to your website. This can be done through paid advertising for banners or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising on sites. You can also do this through involving yourself in clubs, associations, and organizations the industry and target market might be involved with. This is another part of the Market Research, but again, if you are familiar with this group, you can go on your instincts (a Market Research Study is highly advisable). So, you should be able to get some reciprocal linking and awareness through these organizations. Social networking and developing a presence on free sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, YouTube and others is the final method of building awareness. This is much like building a “word of mouth” network. People tell other people and so on and so on. Between building reciprocal links, social networking, and the PPC potential, you stand a good chance at people taking the road to the web site.

That all being said, there is a good deal of development left for the site to be operational. You need to build the aspects to allow you to add product as needed, alter what you need to do including adding photos and pricing, and delete products as well as allow for you to add content through a blog format. This should provide you with the full functionality needed and the blog format will allow you to keep your SEA active. Ideally, you would want to have the Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+ pages as well as a YouTube Channel to showcase your products. This can be a bit more time consuming but not as much as you might think. This type of stuff is something you would need to be doing regularly, maybe a few times per month. I always recommend actively participating in your site content at least once per month and twice if possible.

PTC Computer Solutions has been involved with bringing Search Engine Awareness to web site clients for many years.  It can be a time consuming process and businesses don’t often have the resources to maintain all of these aspects of web interaction not to mention having a member of the staff capable of creating the content necessary to improve the Search Engine Optimization for the web site.  PTC specializes in developing and maintaining this content for its customers.  If you need assistance with this, contact PTC today.

Building Inroads with SEO

If you are looking to get noticed on the Internet but don’t know where to begin, let PTC Computer Solutions help you get started or help improve your current website and website marketing plan.  We can plan a full budget for your company and complete any web marketing efforts you wish to achieve in order to deliver a consistent and effective message to your prospects.  Contact David W. B. Parker (when you think of “W. B.” think of WeB) at davidp@ptccomputersolutions.com or go to www.ptccomputersolutions.com for more information.

By David W. B. Parker
President
PTC Computer Solutions
3/6/2014