What You Need to Know About Search Engines to Compete – Part II
Article by Larry Bailin - Single Throw
As seen in NJ Tech News

Okay, so you show up. Now what?

Organic or Pay Per Click (PPC) placement is only one piece of the puzzle that needs to be addressed for a search marketing campaign to be successful.

I've been dubbed (by the people who work with me) the Simon Cowell of websites. It's not uncommon to walk past my office door and hear, "This website is awful!" or "What were they thinking!" and an occasional, "Now that's how a site should be done!" Search success is not just about getting good placement in the search rankings. The reason my company is hired is because we look at the entire picture when it comes to search. I have seen many sites placed well in the rankings and still fail. Some of the reasons for this have to do with where and how you show up, as well as being in alignment with your potential customers’ needs.

Try to look at your offerings from the outside in. Marketing tells us to be unique; unfortunately, this uniqueness may lead to missed opportunities. Try not to target industry buzzwords if they have not become mainstream. If you are selling a product or service that is new, different and unique, you may want to think about what your potential clients are searching for when they don't realize they need your product or service and should know about it. What has to happen to make a potential client want / need your offerings? To make a better connection with potential customers, try to think like a customer.

Now let’s assume that you’re showing up in a major search engine under good target phrases. You will also need to examine the description that shows up under your search listing. Without a good description, your placement means nothing. Your description should contain a quick call to action, a reason to click. We have to give the searcher a reason to look at your site.

Ever wonder where this description comes from or why some are so awful? Descriptions are taken from different components of a site, depending on the search engine. Some pull the first paragraph of text on your home page while others use the page Title or META description. Some use a combination of all three. If your home page contains no content at all, you can bet that your description in some of the engines will suffer.

Now let’s assume you have a good working description. What happens when we entice a searcher to click from your search listing to your site? According to various studies, you have 8 to 10 seconds to convince a visitor to take action. The action taken by most searchers is to hit the back button and choose another site. Why? Most websites are not "Customer Centric." They were developed without a strategy. No one took into account the three most important letters when creating a customer centric website: “WWW” --- WHO are my customers? WHAT do they want and WHERE do they get it?

By asking these simple questions, a website can address the potential customer who just landed on your site. You need to tell that potential customer that you can (or can't) help them. Be sure to remove the following information from your home page: your mission statement, your vision or anything else that outlines how great you are. There are other sections of your site for that, and a potential customer will get there once they think you might be able to help them. Take a look at your website and ask yourself, “Will my potential customer get it and get it quick?” If you fail here, your search marketing will fail.

How about your contact points? Are they easy to find and use? Do you give a visitor all necessary options to contact you? On my company’s contact page, we give a visitor three ways to make contact: phone, E-mail, or a short form to fill out. All of these options are clear, easy to use and presented above the fold.

When was the last time you took a detailed look at your contact points? Does your sales process require you to get phone or face time with a potential client? If so, do you use a form that asks a lot of required information? Here’s a tip: just collect the information necessary to make contact and not one bit more. On my company’s website (www.singlethrow.com), we realize that we will need to contact the person making the inquiry. We ask only for the information necessary to make that happen: Name, Company, E-mail, Telephone, Zip (if we collect the zip code we can figure out the city and state and route to the appropriate consultant), and a general Comments box. That's it, nothing more is needed.

We have found that most people prefer to fill out a short structured form rather than sending an E-mail or calling, so make sure you have a form for contact.

Test your points of contact regularly. Site evaluations are a major part of my firm’s offerings. I can't tell you how many times we have sent E-mails or filled out forms posing as potential clients and have never received a reply. Or even worse, we received an error when we clicked submit. I have my clients test their contact points every day. For most of them, it has become a routine step for the receptionist to test forms and E-mail first thing in the morning to ensure that they don't miss an important contact from a potential client.

How awful would it be if you spent time and money to attract potential customers to your website just to have your website fail! You may just lose your best customer before you even have the chance to meet them.

You must be prepared before going into any search marketing or Internet marketing campaign. There is more to success than just showing up. You must be in alignment with your potential customers’ needs from beginning to end, starting with the phrases you target to the way you interact with these valuable potential customers. All of these elements, working properly together will lead to a successful campaign, one that makes it easy for potential customers to find you and do business with you.
 

To learn more contact one of our consultants
Back to articles to read Part I or other articles.