websense

As most Web Design & Marketing companies do, we struggle to work on our own site.

We’ve decided ‘09 is the year to take our own advice and really invest in our site, so we’ve re-designed tkg.com.

We even took some time do do a little research both from an SEO standpoint as well as surveying some clients and prospects to learn their needs and wants in a site like ours. With their guidance, we feel we’re on the right track.

Of course, this is only phase one, and we already have some revisions and lots of additions planned.

Please, take a moment and check it out. Let me know what you think, either by commenting here, or by using this form. I welcome and appreciate any input.

It used to be that businesses grew mainly by word of mouth. Then came print, radio, eventually television ads were surely the wave of the future. All of these avenues have been successful of course, but in a way, we have now come full circle. The web has provided a way for the “word of mouth” advertising to grab the best audience. Perhaps not the biggest, but the best audience for your message. Forums, blogs, chat rooms, and social sites where people can tout or trash your product or service are everywhere. People go to the web first to investigate before they make any significant purchase. You need to make sure your message about your product or service, is what they find when your potential customers do a search on their favorite search engine.

There are many avenues on the web that can get the message out there. The question is, which ones are the right ones? Which are the best sites and properties will work best for you and your company. Facebook isn’t the answer to every company’s woes!

Some companies are turning to social media. While some have taken it like a duck to water, others find it a vast and mysterious chasm. There are so many options to choose from, how do you know the right ones for you, and your company?

Getting an answer to this question can be tricky, and of course the reason a good Web Marketer does a lot of evaluating and re-evaluating of tactics, traffic and conversions. Assuming you’re already doing the basics, like clean SEO and maybe some PPC, you’re covering the basics and growing your targeted traffic. But, is that enough? There are so many options: blogging, link building, social media (which in and of itself is loaded with options); many of which are at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing, with a much greater potential.

Let me offer a scenario: You’re an RV manufacturer. You need to maybe build your brand and online reputation a bit. What you might want to do is a little Digging (pun intended). Maybe you hunt around a little and find some sites where folks who have traveled with your products are giving advice, opinions, even stories of their adventures. Perhaps there are even newspaper stories about people who have traveled all over the country in your RVs. So what do you do? This is great, especially if your product is mentioned. You Digg the story. You post a link to the story or forum, blog or whatever on your site. Let these folks that are using your product and talking about it have a voice on your site. Perhaps they notice the link, and decide to link back to you as well, after all, your product has provided them with all this adventure! (One thing that might be fun to do is to start a flickr account and allow these folks to send you pictures from their adventures for upload, and posting the flickr link.) These types of very relevant links are “votes of confidence” in the eyes of the search engines, as well as potential customers!

Let’s look at this same scenario from another angle: you’re an RV manufacturer, and you have been hunting up stories and discussions, whatever, and you come across some rather negative comments about your product. A person with a complaint can be pretty vocal. A complaint that mentions a manufacturer by name can be ranking in the SEs in a week. Others researching RVs see the complaint, and it affects they way they view your product, thus affecting sales. If you get involved in social media in a proactive way, you can brand your company, as well as maintain your reputation.

So I have to ask: Are you taking the time to truly consider these options and ensure that you’re staying on the edge? Or are you stuck in the old habits of print and tv ads?

I know I have mentioned that many of the Fortune 500s don’t have copy on the homepage, but when you check out some of these sites, there is really very little copy to be found anywhere. Especially guilty is the automobile industry. What? Do they think they will just get traffic, just based on brand alone? I know gas is coming down, but lots of folks are looking for a fuel efficient car. Take a look at the screen shot of a Google results page for the search term “fuel efficient car”. Not a single one of the Big 3 automakers are ranking on the first page. In actuality, they are not ranking in the first three pages!
Screenshot of SERP for 1-15-09

What should they be doing?
I’m thinking perhaps a little content on fuel efficiency on the pages featuring cars that are fuel efficient may be a good way to go. Since they are making no attempt at SEO (the whole reason we’re doing this series) its hard to tell what keyphrases they think would work for them. I’d love to have a list of the keywords these guys are going after, since they barely bother with metas, let alone copy or SEO in general, it’s a little hard to tell, but if they did their marketing homework, they would know that there are terms out there that are basically being ignored by the Big 3! These terms could be bringing them some traffic, and most likely, some much needed business.
Some Branding Problems
Chrysler is hanging on by a thread, so what do they use a large portion of their marketing budget for? A televised / print ad THANK YOU NOTE! Instead of spending that money on SEO, which could bring them customers looking to buy their product, they spent millions on something that actually damaged the Chrysler name. Good branding efforts, guys, you one upped the whole “lets take a private jet to D.C. to beg for tax payer dollars” fiasco. Instead , they could have used this money in a way that would enable them to rebuild their brand, and optimally, sell some cars. Wouldn’t you love to know what their sales stats are since that ad came out? They need some damage control and some advice on rebuilding their reputation!
How Can a Good SEM Help Now?
Let’s take whatever is left of Chrysler’s marketing budget, and devote it to some SEO strategies that would not only be much more cost effective, but would bring Chrysler into the 21st century marketing. Create meta tags, get some good copy on the pages, get the discussion on that blog TURNED AROUND, find something positive to discuss (Maybe the new design of the great looking Challenger? It’s not fuel efficient, but boy, is it pretty!). The point is, people shop online, it’s just a fact. They may have to go to a dealer to make a purchase, but they shop online, especially for a new car. They read reviews, check mileage ratings, compare models and makes to determine what will be the best fit for their needs. If you are not there to present your product, and the consumer does not find the information he wants, he looks elsewhere out of frustration. Why is it taking some of these companies so long to catch on?

Yet another installment of easy to implement recommendations for those Fortune 500s that just seem to be missing the boat on SEO. When you look at the homepages of many of the Fortune 500s’ site, you’ll notice that many are not only missing copy, but many have unoptimized navigation, as well as internal linking. A recent article by a UK firm states that optimized navigation can boost sales by as much as 50%! This is an area of SEO that just can’t be ignored! Optimized navigation helps build keyword strength and therefore, rankings. Same goes for internal linking. Your internal links should let the user know, using appropriate keywords, where they are headed when clicking that link. This is an important, yet simple step in the process of optimizing a site. It’s good for the user, makes things clearer, and it’s good for the SEs.
A few of the Fortune 500s that need a little work on their optimization efforts:
Humana
Hess Corporation
Fortune Brands
Goodrich
As I have suggested in a previous post, perhaps integrating SEO into a marketing budget form the onset would help companies deal with some of these issues.

I’ve been in the web design business for a long time now, and I’ve seen a lot of companies come and go. Heck, I’ve been part of a couple of them, but it seems that 08 was an indicator of some serious changes we may see in the near future. Just look at a few major things that happened in the Cleveland web design market in 08. Rosetta bought one of Cleveland’s biggest web design firms, Brulant, and Bridgeline Software scooped up 10th Floor. All of the above are very good companies. This type of consolidation though, is reducing the number of serious players in the market.

Harsh Realities of the Web Design Industry:

It’s no surprise that some shops just can’t make it. A few went out of business in 08, and some are unfortunately struggling now. That’s just a reality of being in an industry with low barriers to entry, it’s easy to get in, but it’s also easy to be pushed out.

Impact of the economy:

Add to the traditional acquisitions and shifts that the web industry has, like most industries in their infancy do, the current state of the economy. Economic down turns usually end up meaning good things for most web design companies, just because of the ROI for the client. However, coming into a serious recession after so much consolidation has been happening could prove to be challenging.

Web developers need to keep marketing, together:

Most web design and marketing shops, us included, have been blogging and communicating to our clients the cost effectiveness of search engine optimization. Web design shops should be beating a similar drum. The more the market continues to hear that the web is the most cost effective means of growing their business the better, no matter what the source is.

Keeping the web design industry in greater Cleveland is good for all of us, no matter who is winning each individual contract.