Ideas for Business

Search engine optimization is fine, however, small business owners should remember one important lesson – the Google Bot has never ever made a purchase; your customers do. There’s an interesting interview with Hamlet Batista that discusses how too much SEO can harm a website, and it can. Your web pages need to be written so that potential customers can access your content quickly and easily. The article discusses, for example, changing navigation links to match keywords. If customers find your navigation links a little confusing, they may just leave, and that’s going to cost you business.

Drawing traffic from search engines just to boost traffic numbers is not the best way to run a business. You are often better off drawing less traffic from a search engine whilst increasing the quality of that traffic. As a business, conversions are the most important metric, so your SEO efforts should be targeting quality traffic, not just ‘any’ traffic.

Traffic, even from a search engine, is not free. SEO takes time, and that’s either time away from your business or a cost to a business when you engage others to perform it for you. An experienced SEO professional will help you target your efforts towards quality traffic. This doesn’t mean you should totally ignore traffic of a lower quality, by all means, attract that traffic if you wish, but not by making on page changes that could hurt the conversion rate of your quality traffic. Batista makes the following point:

The key principle is to first make sure the site, the content, the layout, and the instruction and navigation makes sense for the users because …. you are not optimizing the site for the search engine bots to make a purchase. You have to optimize it for the user.

It’s an interesting situation for small businesses, especially those in competitive markets. SEO is designed to get the best search results, however, your website should be designed to achieve conversion goals from visitors. The real key is to get the balance right, and it can be done.

There are some marketers that are quite sensitive when it comes to any foray into social media by Google. Google doesn’t have a great record for long term support of projects if they don’t grab everyone’s attention immediately, so there is a little resistance to Google+. The feeling in some quarters is simple enough – why expend energy if the whole concept quietly slips under the carpet in a year or two? Whilst I understand their feelings, I don’t think they are right this time; in fact, I think Google+ is here for the long haul.

One thing is certain, Google is still pumping resources into the project, and their latest offering for website owners includes functional and cosmetic changes to the Google+ button. These changes include:

• the ability to configure a badge to a suitable width
• changing the background color of a widget to match your page’s color
• including a widget that displays your Google+ profile’s circle count

As a marketing tool, website owners have nothing to lose by including a badge on their sites. According to an article on WebProNews, some businesses are receiving a 30% increase in followers simply because of the widget. If your content is of a reasonable standard, then you shouldn’t find it too difficult to encourage readers to click on social media buttons.  There’s no harm in inviting your readers to click on social media buttons – they are often sharing a good story with friends whilst bookmarking an entry for future reference.

When it comes to marketing, you need to use every tool that adds to your website’s exposure. Google+ looks to be one widget that’s here for the long run – are you badged yet?

Online marketing has, to a certain extent, blinded many business people to some of the simpler rules of business. Analytics is one area where the online world often seems to have different rules than an offline business. What’s the most important metric for a small business. Traffic? Conversions? Search rankings? These are all areas that online businesses concentrate on, and whilst they are important areas to measure, they are not the most important.

For small businesses, the bottom line always has been and always will be profitability. Engaging in a pay-per-click campaign is fine, and measuring traffic and conversions is always going to help with future planning, and perhaps even modifying your current campaigns. At the end of the day, if your pay-per-click is not making a profit, then your business could be on the slide. The same can be said for SEO and social media marketing. If your profitability is being compromised, then you need to either modify your marketing campaign or to look for alternative marketing methods.

Pay-per-click, search engine optimization and social media marketing are not always the best channels for some businesses. Alternatives such as email marketing and banner advertising can achieve better results in terms of profitability – the former, often achieved through data collected offline. You would be surprised at how many brick and mortar businesses now collect email addresses at the checkout and then use those email addresses as very successful email marketing campaigns.

The most important metric for any small business is the return on investment (ROI) that is measured against any campaign. There are times when a marketing campaign – for example, a brand awareness campaign – doesn’t result in short term profits that are easily identified. As a small business owner, you need to make judgements as to whether or not a marketing campaign should be measured or designed more for PR or branding. Analytics are important, however, you need the right data and that data should be measured against a desired goal.

Social media is certainly dominating people’s minds when it comes to online marketing to consumers, but are they the best places to network with other business owners? There is an interesting article on The Next Web highlighting the demise of local social media due to the dominance of Facebook. Whilst there is a lot of hype surrounding Twitter, it fills the number two position in only two countries, the U.S. and the U.K, admittedly big markets. LinkedIn is the second choice in many other countries, yet it is not really designed for consumer marketing.

LinkedIn has become a powerful force when it comes to networking and business-to-business marketing. Professionals appreciate the tighter security surrounding who can link to you, and who is able to see your complete profile. This means you can concentrate on those who interest you, or who are in the same niche as yourself. Where Facebook is all about gaining as many followers as possible, LinkedIn is more about connecting on a professional basis – the heart of networking for small business.

Whilst LinkedIn does offer an opportunity to network with others from all over the world, it’s not the only opportunity. In fact, more traditional methods often have a much more lasting effect. It’s interesting to look at the online marketing industry as an example. Whilst day-to-day contact is maintained through social media channels, online marketing professionals take advantage of every opportunity to meet in person. International online marketing events draw crowds from around the world, all looking to network face to face, all looking to ‘humanize’ their online networking activities.

For small businesses, social media channels such as LinkedIn offer a great opportunity to connect with similar-minded business people. However, if you get the opportunity to meet in person, grab it. Chambers of Commerce, trade associations and state or national conferences are all important areas to develop a network. While you may think that you can’t spare the time, the connections you make could well save you a lot of time.

Google has become mean concerning web sites and display advertising. If the advertising on your web page pushes the content down below the fold, then your site may receive a ding in the search rankings.

Why do I say “mean?” One poorly designed page could affect your whole site, not just that one page. If you’ve recently suffered a serious drop in search rankings, check your pages for advertising, have you overdone it?

There is a logic to Google’s approach. Google wants to present searchers with the best content. If a web page has more ads than content, and if a user has to scroll down below the fold to find that content, then, in Google’s humble opinion, that page is not quality. Furthermore, if that page is not quality, then neither are any of the other pages on that site. What isn’t clear is whether or not your own display advertising has the same effect – logically, it would since the emphasis now is content and having it readily available to users.

If you do have a lot of advertising on your pages, there are a number of approaches you can take. These include:

• reducing the number of ads,
• redesigning your web page so that content appears above the fold,
• using sidebars for display advertising,
• ensuring ads are relevant to the pages’ content.

Google is not anti-advertising. In fact, Google does encourage website owners to include Adsense ad units on their sites although they do suggest you follow their guidelines when it comes to quantity and placement. The rules related to SEO are constantly changing and so it always pays to stay on top of the latest news.