Archive for November, 2002

Is it Ever Enough?

November 27th, 2002

As marketers, we are always asking ourselves what more can we do to help our sales team or close more business.

Often marketers concentrate on the traditional marketing tactics and what more you can do to help your sales force sell more. Should you buy an ad here, get some PR there or attend one more trade show?

Unfortunately, most forget that their interactive marketing tools need ongoing attention as well. Websites need to be constantly updated, newsletters need to be written and published, and search engine rankings need to be maintained.

Here are some examples. How many of you know that in as little as 30 days your search engine rankings can decrease? Or, that the more links you have from other sites to yours will help your search engine rankings more than your keywords?

Another thing that most companies with websites don’t realize is that the timeliness of your web content has two effects. First, return visitors to your site are always looking for something new – give it to them or they won’t be back. Second, if your competition is keeping their content fresh and you aren’t, they are going to be ranked better with the search engines.

So the message is that traditional marketing isn’t enough in today’s business environment. As marketers we must keep finding ways to entice our prospects, close our leads and serve our customers. And that means paying attention to all of your marketing tools, especially your website.

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Search Engine Optimization

November 13th, 2002

Search Engine Optimization – The art of increasing and maintaining top rankings at the various search engines.

Everyone has a method, trick or supernatural hoax that they claim can help increase your rankings at the search engines. However, optimizing your website for a search engine is not one thing ? it is many. In fact, most webmasters believe that meta-data (special little hidden code) alone are enough to do the trick.

The truth is that each search engine uses a different formula to come up with their rankings. And the game is to have the best score. Some weigh your keywords more than your summary. Some use the text from your site more. And some look for certain bits of code within the HTML.

The most important thing I can tell you is that search engines used to score on a page-to-page basis. Now, it is based on the totality of your site.

Here are four steps to get you ranked better:

  • Keep your page titles to a minimum number of words.
  • Your summary meta-tag needs to be like your elevator speech ? short, sweet and to the point, twenty-five words or less.
  • When compiling your keywords, always think how your site visitors and customers think.
  • Copy is your unsung hero – the search engines are reading your site.

As we quoted in one of our previous newsletters, search engines have been rated as the number one online tactic for acquiring site traffic. Do not underestimate how a sound optimization program can affect your revenues.

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Posted in Search Engine Optimization