Note: the following post is by our friend and colleague Adam Henige of Netvantage Marketing.
Part of search engine optimization, unfortunately, is stepping into a quagmire of a site and trying to turn it into a gold mine. This is not always easy to do, nor is it my favorite thing to do, but it is completely understandable. Marketing, for much of its existence, has provided people with bite sized chunks of information – logos, catchy slogans and taglines that were plastered on everything a company could afford to affix them to. With the web, and with Internet marketing, things changed. As more nimble companies quickly found out and acted upon, the experience offered by the web needed to be a different one. People wanted to be immersed in content and given quick access to actionable outcomes.
It was the new paradigm of the Internet – marketers were no longer the ones looking through the crosshairs, it was the other way around. Whereas the public might not always want to be hit by the radio spot or TV commercial you’re aiming at them, you best believe you want to be wearing the bullseye when Mr. and Mrs. Consumer decide they’re looking to pull the trigger on a purchase or an information gathering mission.
To some extent, the majority of companies worth their salt acknowledged this change to some degree. However, for the most part, it was only given minor consideration. The ramifications of this underwhelming response to changes in marketing were twofold: The one I encounter most frequently are sites that acknowledged the need for taking action, offering users ecommerce functionality, ability to contact a sales rep, or download more information. Forgotten in this effort, typically, was enriching the content to meet users’ growing expectations. So what users were left with was a site that was functional, but didn’t help educate or engage visitors experiencing the site for the first time, missing an opportunity to provide a great experience with a new prospective customer and thereby largely negating the functionality. I find these people tend to be the ones who say, “The web doesn’t work, we spent a TON of money instituting a shopping cart (or insert other functionality initiative here) and the supporting infrastructure and we didn’t make a nickel!”
The second problem in not properly addressing the content of the site is perhaps even more important – search engine optimization. The challenge is to find a balance between strong site aesthetics, and paying attention to search engines. Again, some companies adopted this strategy and reaped the benefits. Quite simply, search engines love content. If your site is short on content, or lacks rich, relevant content, this will quickly explain why you’re not showing up for the many terms you’d like to be found on. Those nimble firms I mentioned earlier took care of content right away, reaping the benefits of engaging site experiences as well as the added boost in visibility from search engines. Beyond that, some of them likely got wise to search engine optimization a long time ago and have also been building backlinks ever since, placing even more distance between them and their Luddite competitors.
What does this mean for the companies looking up from a page seven result on Google? It means there’s a long way to go. Fortunately, everyone’s playing by the same rules, so you’ll just need to take the appropriate steps and work a little harder to gain back that positioning on search engines. Now, as for the customers lost and the brand building opportunities missed already, I’m not sure I can help there.
No Comments » Posted on October 16th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn
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