Marketing
An important step to building a website that not only conveys your personal message, but does so in a fashion that is superior to your competitor, is the creation and implementation of an effective, well thought out marketing strategy.
- Relevant and simple domain name / URL.
- Search engine friendly content and links.
- Unified message and theme.
- Flow of user actions leading to a specific goal.
- Links in, links out.
- Optimizing key phrases, title tags, page descriptions, and content to penetrate a market niche.
- Develop a competitive angle.
- Corporate identity and branding.
Registering and determining the domain name is the first crucial step in creating a website. Due to aggressive competition, finding the perfect URL to match your company can be a difficult task. By experience, we have found that there is a careful balance in choosing names between ease of use and choosing relative words in the URL's name. For instance, the URL www.springboardreview.com contains the word 'review' and 'springboard'. 'Springboard' is the branded name of this employee review system, whereas 'review' is a word that is contained in the key phrase which this site is marketed for. When a potential visitor searches for our marketed key phrase and Springboard returns as a result, the word 'review' in the URL will be highlighted, increasing the chances a potential visitor will click on your domain. Secondly, search engines tend to prefer domains that contain explicit key phrase words in the domain. Lastly, by choosing a word that represents both your key phrase and the objectives of your company, it will be easier for potential visitors to remember your company and its associated URL.
Search engines view and understand your site based on the content and structure that your website is built upon. As the search engines continually crawl through the Internet, when they stumble upon your site, it is important that they can easily understand and interpret what your site is about and rank it accordingly. A strategic content structure that focuses on your message while using natural text based links will best allow the search engines to understand, record, and present your message.
A consistent message and feel throughout your site is important for a visitor to properly understand your intentions. Often, a visitor may become confused if the message or the feel of your website is broken or abstract. It is important to paint a picture of your intent with a clear and friendly message that will captivate the visitor.
Defining a purpose for your website and then creating the structure around that purpose is important. Your goals could range from having a visitor signup for your monthly newsletter, to buying a piece of furniture from you, to submitting a quotation request form. Your purpose, your site, and your goals all must function as a single unit.
The Internet is a web. Specifically, the Internet is a web of links. As the search engines crawl through the Internet, the more links that point into your site will cause the search engines to crawl through your site more often, thus increasing your websites awareness and ranking. Links out of your site also help as you then become a more active part of the web leading people and search engines to useful important information.
Careful analytics of your market, your competitors, their strengths and their weaknesses, can provide you with the insight required to find the perfect gap to leverage and push your idea.
Pulling together your competitive angle, your content, your URL, and your marketing strategy helps you create a web of marketing terms. These terms organize, optimize, and deliver your message to enable the greatest chance of organically ranking close to the top of the search engine results. Careful consideration needs to be made into the construction of the title and description of the page, these are the elements that are listed on the results page. The words used to find your site will appear in bold when the result is returned. This allows for greater attraction and a greater chance of a visit if the message is clear, and your key words are positioned effectively.
When a product or particular service is concerned, it is important to have a consistent feel to your branding that your users become comfortable with. A true branding and identity strategy requires careful thought, deliberation, and effort. It can take many years to successfully brand a product.