Winning Online

When I first started my professional career in this industry I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I wanted to design, I wanted to write and I wanted to build. What I soon learned is that none of this would be possible if I didn’t work marketing into the mix somewhere. As I worked my way up I quickly learned that your website is only as good as your web marketing strategy. I find myself saying this more and more these days… you can design, develop and deploy the best looking website on the net, but if now one knows that it’s there and/or there is no way to find it, then what’s the value?

As if it wasn’t enough that the term marketing must now come in the same breath as the term design, it’s now common knowledge that the methods we use to market our websites must evolve with the search engines that are indexing them. Translation, if you want to push traffic to your site, your marketing strategy must be ongoing. When your site goes live, you’ve only just begun.

I believe a website should be an extension of your sales and/or marketing team. Today, your website must work for you. It should help inform users and provide creative ways to convert those users into customers. To be a successful marketing tool, your website doesn’t need to be flashy or over the top in terms of design or functionality. With today’s search-driven internet, content is king! What’s most important is what your website says and how it says it.

A good place to start with your web marketing strategy is with the major search engines. In order for your website to get attention from the most important parties (Google, YAHOO! and MSN accounting for about 93% of all searches done across the globe in December 2007), you need to give them what they want… relevant, optimized and ever-changing content. Of course there is more to it than just posting pages and pages of content to your site, there certainly needs to be an overall strategy in place. What we intend to address with this blog are our recommendations for developing these different kinds of website marketing strategies. What we hope you will learn is that it is more than just design, more than just creative writing, and more than just building… ultimately it is a combination of all these items that will help you succeed with your online endeavors.

If you feel overwhelmed with the mere mention of the words web marketing or optimization, take a deep breath and remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day… learning how to properly market your website takes time. We can assure you that with the right plan, it is time well spent.

And always keep in mind that if you build it, and optimize it, and market it… they will come.

Until next time -

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