Are You Making the Right Impression? Part II
In the last post, we talked about the importance of making a good - and fast - impression on those visiting your website. You only have a very short amount of time to hook your audience; you must be able to attract their attention - enough so that they choose to even stay on your site - and then sell them long term with the material that you have to offer. In addition to selling your site to its intended audience you are also charged with gaining the attention of the search engines. After all, it is the engines that will ultimately deliver you with your audience; if you are not able to rank well among the search engines then you may find yourself constantly swimming upstream against a surging Internet tide.
The challenge of SEO professionals for any client is to first deliver a status report - a measure of where the website stands before there can be any plans for its future. A website optimization firm will determine where in the search engine rankings your website currently holds a place and what keywords your potential audience is using to find goods and services just like those that you have to offer.
First keywords are chosen based on relevance and market competitiveness. It is then important that chosen keywords are threaded throughout the website’s content. Make no mistake - content definitely serves two masters online. The search engines are looking for fresh content - that the website is being managed, maintained and updated. Users, of course, are looking for a website that delivers what they need and content helps to sell your business overall. Great online content seamlessly meshes SEO with product and business marketing - keeping on the search engines’ radars and continually providing informative and updated content that sells the user and makes that all-important great impression.
Are You Making the Right Impression? Part I
Marketing and advertising on any level calls for successfully communicating a message and communicating it quickly. You only have moments to capture the attention of your audience; minutes to create an impression that stays with them. The online audience - typically a finicky crowd who surf from site to site in search of what they want - is not easily impressed. The only way to make sure that you inspire an audience to keep coming back to your website is to make sure that you make a great impression right from the start. Are you doing all that you can to capture the attention of your audience and make the best impression?
The only way to know for sure which way to go when it comes to online marketing is to know where you are at present time. It is crucial for anyone embarking on an online marketing campaign (and if you are online without considering marketing then you are facing a sure slide into Internet obscurity) to work with a knowledgeable website optimization firm that can give you an honest, detailed evaluation of your website so that you can put an appropriate marketing plan into place to move you forward.
When you evaluate whether or not you are making an appropriate impression - online - you are talking about two separate audiences - the search engines and the Internet users who are in the market for your goods and services. You want to make sure that you are both speaking to the search engines in a manner that allows them to rank you highly in their results and speaking to your audience in such a way that makes an impression, encourages them to return, and sets you up to build relationships and convert website traffic into sales; which is, after all, ultimately what you are after in marketing your website. More in the next post…