SEO, Site Marketing and Web Analytics: Digital Dream Team

Does your business have an active digital pulse? Or is it in need of a

pacemaker? Important questions. Here is another … how do your site visitors and

potential customers view your site?

A Website presence has become standard operating procedure for any business

seeking to reach a wider audience, enhance marketing and advertising efforts,

stretch marketing budgets, make strategic affiliations, or network and interact on a

national or global scale. Once your business site has been designed, built and set in

motion, the fun begins. And the name of this game is SEO (Search Engine

Optimization).

SEO is a vital part of Website marketing. Think of it as the foundation on which to

build your promotion and advertising campaigns. Without effective SEO, your site

will be buried in the obscurity of distant search engine listings. With a good SEO

foundation and practices, your site will gain important rank position in the big

search engines and your customers, new and old, will find you with minimal

searching.

As good as rank position may sound, keep in mind that the search industry is

always evolving, and listings/rankings have to be watched and worked regularly.

Online marketing and SEO experts all agree that submitting a site to search engines

for listing is only the beginning.

Once the Meta data has been completed (the development and placement of

keywords in the HTML Meta tags on your site page files), you can begin a regular

marketing plan. Part of this plan should include staying aware of any changes that

the major search players are going through.

A solid marketing plan will be different things to different people. There are low

cost Web-only strategies that utilize press releases, link or banner exchanges,

affiliate programs and providing free content, such as e-books or industry

information. These can take a little longer to get results, so where money is saved,

time involvement becomes crucial. For faster results, there are pay-per-click

programs and various online paid advertising. And for those businesses that seek

local and offline clientele, there are magazine, newspaper, radio and TV ads. But

whatever the methods chosen, all marketing comes back to your Website. The ideal

scenario allows you to keep close and accurate track of all your efforts, know the

success or failure of campaigns, and learn user response through the activity on

your Website. Too many businesses underutilize their Websites, wasting a highly

valuable tool.

Basically there are two avenues of marketing, and they should both lead back to

your Website — site-specific online advertising, and outside advertising that brings

people to your site. Therefore, successful marketing requires that you really know

your site visitors.

What do your potential customers see when they visit your Website? What invites

them to move through your site? What compels them to make a purchase, or sign

up for the newsletter? To be successful with your marketing, you MUST know your

audience.

It really is not as difficult as it sounds. With the growing awareness of Web analytics,

business owners are finding that their site traffic data can yield valuable and

detailed data on their visitors’ habits, usage… and their response to advertising.

Web analytics reports, until very recently, were generated from a cumbersome,

time-consuming log-based system that was very difficult to understand by anyone

who was not tech-savvy. Many sites still labor through this method for their data

reports. However, this is no longer necessary.

Today’s analytics and site tracking services are striving to be more useful and

available. As with anything on the Internet, it either evolves or disappears. Web

analytics have become recognized as a critical business component and, as a result,

we are seeing the evolution of a new age heading toward a warmer, more sociable

and approachable Web analytics industry.

Owning a business today means you must have an online presence. It is a valuable

tool, too often overlooked. With some good, solid SEO, you have a firm marketing

foundation for your business; a global calling card. With an aggressive marketing

and advertising strategy, you will have a tool to enhance your company’s bottom

line. And with this next generation of analytics, you have all the power you need to

turn your Website into a one-stop marketing center, where you can keep your

virtual fingers on the vivid pulse of your business ad campaigns, your visitors, your

customers and your success.