This month, we’ll outline 10 ways to improve your web presence. Your web site is a powerful weapon in your overall marketing strategy and you should not ignore its potential or ability to drive targeted business to your phone or email.

In fact, if you do not have a professional web site, you can do irreparable harm to your online reputation and ability to attract and keep new customers. If you had a choice, would you turn up to a job interview in a 20 year old “beater” car or a 3 year old Mercedes? Would you wear jeans, t-shirt and trainers or slacks, leather shoes and a collared shirt? I know which one I would do.

The same principle applies to your web site. If it’s clean, professionally-designed, easy to navigate, and matches your marketing materials, it will make a great first impression as it shows the visitor that you invest time and effort into how you are perceived and how you treat your customers.

So shall we get started? Here are 10 ways that you can improve your web presence:

1. Know what your market is and who your customers are
   Once you know these things, you can target your web site to the market and customers within it, write copy for those customers, and focus on what you do best and which will bring you the most business.
2. Research the keywords associated with your market
   The words that are on your web site must exactly match what your customers use to search for your type of product or service. The search engine spiders are not human—in fact, they are not that clever—they simply match what people are using to search with web sites that provide those phrases. Know what you do, what words describe what you do, and what words are actually used by people to search for your particular line of business.
3. Integrate those keywords into the important areas of your web site so they make sense to the searcher and visitor
   If you have researched what people are using to search and integrated those phrases into the copy and tags (specific areas in your site code) on your web site, you should get traffic for those particular phrases. But remember… THEY MUST MAKE SENSE TO YOUR VISITOR FIRST! Never keyword-stuff for the search engines. Never.
4. Build content- and keyword-rich (using your top phrases) pages for your market and your customers
   Know what your customers want then write useful information for them.
5. Update your site regularly with fresh content
   Bring your customers back on a regular basis by keeping your site updated with fresh and interesting content.
6. Have a web site that converts visitors into customers
   Provide your customers with a professional look-and-feel, easy navigation, interesting content, useful resources, and user-friendly “action items.” If the site looks poorly-designed, is 10 years old, and uses generic stock photography, it does your business more harm than good. Would you turn up to see a client in a “beater” or a Mercedes?
7. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket
   Make sure you get traffic from ALL major search engines, directories, and links from other Web sites who are authorities in your field.
8. Market your site’s web address at EVERY opportunity
   Have your web address on your business cards, stationary, email newsletters, your email signature, promotional material, networking, bumper and window stickers, forums and blogs, social media profiles. Never let an opportunity slip to remind someone of your site. If there is a particular page that you want people to see aside from the Home page, provide a link to it in your email signature.
9. Track, analyze and act…
   Get rid of that hit counter and integrate some high-quality web analysis software. See what keywords are being used to find your site then write an article using them. See if one search engine is lagging behind then try to figure out how to fix that problem. See what web sites bring you traffic then see how you can work with them to increase that traffic.
10. Don’t sit back and relax for a moment
    Research, subscribe to web site email newsletters, go to conferences, talk to people. Never stop trying to improve your business and how it is perceived by other people.

Did you notice that I didn’t mention Google until now? That’s because they are not the “golden goose” that will bring you untold millions. They simply one tool in your toolbox. Ignore the rest at your peril.

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 11:29 am.