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Marketing Tactics: Simple Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategies (2/8/2010)

By Leslie Stevens, Eclipse Marketing

Getting customers to your website is critical if you want to generate new business. One way is to optimise your website to maximise search engine rankings, which you can do in-house or outsource. Either way, you should understand basic elements of SEO. Optimisation is no longer simply adding key terms to meta tags, which most people assume. That strategy worked 10 years ago, but not today. Below are five elements that you should understand, which are critical in SEO.

Getting customers to your website is critical: a professional design (as above) will help, but you must also work on your search engine optimisation (SEO).

1. Back links - Back links are links that go from another site to your website. For example, a back link might come from one of your suppliers who lists your company on their dealer directory. There are numerous places to go to get back links, such as local business associations, trade associations, online trade magazines, alumni schools, etc. You can even post press releases via the Wire, which will give you back links by media outlets who publish your release. The concept behind back links is that search engine companies, such as Google, Yahoo and Bing view websites with many back links as popular sites that people trust. Search engine companies rank non-profit sites and sites that end in '.edu' as more credible and assign more points to these sites. Basically the more points your site gets, the higher you will be listed in a search.

Stay away from 'link-farms'. These are services that will link your website to thousands of websites. Search engine services will remove your website from their website if they find out you practice this behaviour, which is termed 'blackhat'. Don't do it... you will never be able to return to Google, Yahoo and many other search engine sites again.

2. Title tags and relevancy - Title tags are the terms listed at the top of your website. You might have not noticed them before, but if you go to your website, look at the very top of each page. These terms are what shows up in search engine searches and viewers see those title tags when selecting which site to visit. Search engine crawlers look for these terms. Your website needs to be relevant to the title tags. If you try to cheat by having several pages of title tags that are not relevant to your company, search engine services will once again drop you.

When determining title tags, consider this fact: it is hard to own popular terms such as audio/video or home theatre. It is much easier to own groups of words, such home theatre and Manchester/ London because fewer companies are located in your area and will use local key words.

3. Fresh content - Search engine companies rank sites with fresh content higher than sites that haven't been updated in a while. Since you have limited time, updating your site can be a daunting task. One easy way to update your site on a regular basis is through a blog. A Wordpress blog, for example, is easy to integrate into your website and use on a regular basis. You simply log into your website and add a sentence or two each week. If you don't have the time, assign it to someone in your company or a family member. You can choose to enable other people to contribute to your blog and at the same time, control what gets posted.

When writing in your blog, make sure you use relevant key words that people will search for, but make sure that you know the terms that your customers will actually use. For example, our industry uses the term 'distributed audio', however many of your customers may use the term 'whole-house audio' or 'multi-room audio'. You can find out which terms people have used in the past to find your website by signing up for a Google account. Here you will learn a wide variety of information, such as sources that visitors came from, how long they stayed on your website, terms they used to find you, and much more information about your website. You can even sign up for Google Alerts, which is a free service that notifies you every time your website is posted on another website.

4. Content, not flash - Search engine crawlers eat code, not images. Flash is cool from a visual perspective, but it does nothing for your optimisation. It's important to have the right balance between flash and appropriate text. In addition, make sure photo file names use relevant terms, such as 'home theatre' or 'flat panels'. There are terms that people look for... not for example, 'Smith's living room' which an AV integrator might label their image after the name of their customer.

5. Pay Per Click (PPC) - Until now we've been talking about 'organic' search engine optimisation, as compared to 'paid-for' optimisation. In organic optimisation, sites typically come up in search engines on the left or centre of the page. Paid-for optimisation, such as Pay Per Click, comes up in the right column. Many search engine users know the difference between popular sites and paid-for listings, and tend to go to the former. However that doesn't mean you should rule out PPC services. It's a trade off. You have to determine if you want to invest the time and money in organic website optimisation or if you want to pay for PPC. PPC is not inexpensive either. You bid on keywords and then you pay for it every time someone clicks on your website. You can put a limit on it, such as 100 times per month, but you could go through your limit within 5 minutes.

In the case of Google, pay per click search results are shown in the column on the right, and in some cases, in a highlighted box above the natural search results in the centre of the page.

Conclusion

Website optimisation, whether through organic optimisation or Pay Per Click will cost you time and money. You have to determine your best return on investment (ROI). In addition to SEO, you should also consider ways to drive customers to your website, for example, sending them informative e-newsletters on a regular basis and publishing your website on your marketing tools, such as your vehicle signage, literature, stationery, etc.

Leslie Stevens is President of Eclipse Marketing. Eclipse Marketing. Eclipse Marketing is a full service marketing and public relations firm, servicing the residential and commercial audio/video and security industry. Eclipse Marketing provides electronic system contractors, manufacturers and distributors with professionally-designed and affordable marketing material. Eclipse Marketing is partners with HiddenWires, CEDIA, TechHome, PARA and InfoComm International.

www.eclipsemarketing.net