Optimize Your Web Site

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With many potential clients searching online for your services, a Web site is a must in your marketing mix. But simply having a site isn’t enough any more. Your site needs to be optimized so search engines find it and list it near the top of the search pages.

Some of the top things search engines look for include:

•            Presence of the key words searched

•            Frequently updated content

•            Links to your site from other sites

Surprisingly, many company sites, while including in-depth information about products or services, may not include typical phrases people search to find those products or services.

For example, imagine you own a Greek restaurant in Marietta, Georgia. Your Web site includes your restaurant name, a description of your food and your location. This should be enough to bring your site up when people are searching for Greek restaurants – right? Well, maybe. But assuming you want people from all over the metro Atlanta area to find your restaurant online, maybe not. Think for a minute how you search for restaurants … would you put Marietta Greek restaurants or Atlanta Greek restaurants into a search engine? If you put Atlanta Greek restaurants in, and your site doesn’t mention Atlanta anywhere, your restaurant is not going to come up in that search.

Thinking like a potential client will help you determine what key words they might use to look for products or services like yours. Once you’ve come up with a list of potential key words, you need to take a look at your site and see if those words are included on your site. If not, it’s time to update your content … which is another way to improve your search engine ranking. You can also do this by frequently adding news items or a blog to your site, as well as increasing your digital footprint by starting a Facebook page or Twitter or LinkedIn account.

Seeking links to your site from other sites can be time consuming, but also very helpful in improving traffic to your site. Look for opportunities to add reciprocal links to your site from trade associations, chambers of commerce, vendors or other sites such as Digg, Facebook and other social media sites.

Wootton Marketing Associates, LLC can help you define appropriate key words; update your content and identify linking opportunities. Contact me today to learn more!

Wootton Marketing Associates provides sales and marketing services using traditional and electronic solutions primarily for B2B organizations in Atlanta. Services include public relations, web technologies, social media marketing, lead generation, research and creative services.

Thoughtful Blogging Helps Improve SEO

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One of my clients has experienced improved search engine rankings lately, without optimizing his entire site. And he’s done it simply with his blog.

Blogging has several benefits – it provides new content to your site; it gives you the opportunity to add key words to your content; and, you can include links to other parts of your site or outside sites, all of which improve your rankings in search engines.

So, how can blogging help your company improve its rankings in search engines?

  1. Make sure the content is specific to your industry. It’s ok to vary it from time to time with company charity involvement or new hires, but sticking to topics about what you do best the majority of the time is advisable.
  2. Consider the key words you think your clients and customers are using when searching for you product or service and look for opportunities to use those words and phrases within the blog.
  3. Look for opportunities to link to external Web sites. If you are quoting information from another source, add a link to the entire study within your blog.
  4. Create a closing paragraph that you use every time that describes what your company does, using your keywords. For example, if your company is a law firm, you might use something like this: “Acme Law Partners in Atlanta, Georgia was established in 1987. Our attorneys specialize in family law, workers comp and intellectual property.” If your potential clients searched for Atlanta workers comp attorneys, all of those words now appear on your site.
  5. Link to appropriate sections on your own site. When discussing topics in your blog that correspond to your services and products, link to the area of your Web site where you explain what you do. Using the closing paragraph example above, perhaps that law firm would link the words family law, workers comp and intellectual property back to the corresponding pages on their site.

Please contact me for more information on how to make your blog an effective search engine optimization tool for your company.

Wootton Marketing Associates provides sales and marketing services using traditional and electronic solutions primarily for B2B organizations in Atlanta. Services include public relations, web technologies, social media marketing, lead generation, research and creative services.

 

Start Planning Now! Part III

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In the last two blogs, I covered identifying your target market, media research and selection. Once you’ve identified the correct media here are the next steps to ensuring an effective marketing plan:

Step Five: Maximize your efforts. Support your marketing efforts by ensuring they are all sending consistent messages, with consistent graphics to ensure your brand strength is not diluted. This is especially important as you branch out into multiple media platforms. Also, make sure you post any events you might be attending to your Web site, blog about them and post updates about them on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook.

Step Six: Measure the results. While the success of Web-based advertising and trade show participation is relatively easy to track, print measurement can be trickier. Determine ways to track the success of these ads as well – can you use a special phone number or email address for people to reach you via these ads so you know how they found out about you? Can you ask your sales staff to ask clients how they heard about you? After a few months, if you can’t identify measurable success in a certain media, you may reconsider whether to move your dollars into an area that is more promising.

Wootton Marketing Associates provides sales and marketing services using traditional and digital solutions primarily for B2B organizations in Atlanta. Services include public relations, web technologies, social media marketing, lead generation, research and creative services. We can create a solid, effective marketing plan for your business to assure your continuing success in 2012. Please feel free to contact me to discuss!

Start Planning Now! Part II

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In the last blog, the importance of defining your target market and researching the media that serve that market were discussed as part of your marketing planning process. This week, let’s explore the best way to use the media research.

Step Three: Choose the media that best reach your market that also fit your budget. Advertising in a national engineering publication may be cost prohibitive, but what about a publication or Web site managed by an engineering association? If you are exhibiting at a trade show, look for opportunities to maximize your presence by renting mailing lists of pre-registered attendees and sending them an invitation to visit your booth.

Step Four: Avoid spreading yourself too thin. Just because there may be 20 magazines/Web sites that target your market, doesn’t mean you need to be in all of them. Carefully consider which ones have the best circulation or number of visitors and choose two or three, then advertise frequently in those, instead of sporadically in all 20.

Look for Steps Five and Six next week.

Wootton Marketing Associates provides sales and marketing services using traditional and digital solutions primarily for B2B organizations in Atlanta. Services include public relations, web technologies, social media marketing, lead generation, research and creative services. We can create a solid, effective marketing plan for your business to assure your continuing success in 2012. Please feel free to contact me to discuss!

Start Planning Now – Part I

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As the year draws to a close, many of you are looking forward to what you want your companies to accomplish in 2012. Now is the perfect time to start planning a targeted, effective marketing strategy to help you reach those goals.

Here are some steps to consider when deciding how to spend your precious marketing dollars:

Step One: The key to a strong marketing plan is to first define your target market. Who needs your product or service? Is it another business? Women with children? Teen-agers?

Step Two: Once you’ve identified your target market, research the media they use. For example, if you’re trying to sell an engineering product, find out if there’s a trade publication or trade show that targets the particular type of engineer who would buy your product.

Look for Steps Three and Four in the next blog!

Wootton Marketing Associates provides sales and marketing services using traditional and digital solutions primarily for B2B organizations in Atlanta. Services include public relations, web technologies, social media marketing, lead generation, research and creative services. We can create a solid, effective marketing plan for your business to assure your continuing success in 2012. Please feel free to contact me to discuss!