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.