Search Impacts Your Business More Than You Think
By Eric Gilbertsen, VP Account Director
We know that search has changed human behavior. Nearly every hunt for answers starts with Google, Yahoo or Bing. It’s where we go before making a purchasing decision, starting a research paper or finding a good Chinese restaurant.
Behind these queries are users on a mission – eager to consume and ready to act. And these queries reveal a lot about users – the way they think, what language they use, how they solve problems – and how they came upon your organization as the solution.
Dig into your analytics and look at your traffic sources. (If you don’t have analytics, please stop reading and call me.) Chances are that search accounts for a big piece of the traffic pie. Now look at the keywords. See any missing from the list? Are there some that generate more conversions? You’re likely to find a few surprises and some new opportunities.
And that is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in. SEO is a discipline designed to seize opportunities and identify efficiencies in the search space, and includes a host of tactics that should be integrated into all phases of a marketing campaign. Consider it when you:
- Write an article, news story or press release. A familiarity with SEO will shape your message in a way that raises its profile within search engine results and help you reach a relevant audience. And it’s not just the content to consider – knowing exactly how and where to publish your content is a critical component for an optimized site.
- Re-architect your website. The depth of your sub-directories and the content that resides there directly affects search results. Internal site architecture is one of the foundations of solid SEO.
- Redesign your website. A clean, quick-loading design is more easily crawled and indexed by search engines. And it’s important to properly tag and name your images and multimedia files.
- Running TV spots on late night cable. Your advertising is driving search, but do you know which keywords are most used? Analytics will help you pinpoint your effectiveness.
- Sell or support a product. Whether your customers are looking to buy, repair, upgrade, or replace, they’ll start with a search… and less than 10% of users dig deeper than the first page.
In all of these cases, a strong SEO strategy can help your business gain visibility. It can help your message reach the masses, help reshape your online image and presence and help drive sales and conversions on your website.
Most marketers and their agencies today only practice what is called on-page SEO by implementing standard techniques on their own domain. That’s simply not enough. At Virilion and RepEquity, our search-based services include both halves of the equation: On-page and off-page SEO. In order to fully leverage search, it requires off-page promotion, link-building and content creation. Fortunately for our clients, we do it all.
The thing about search is that your loss is someone else’s gain. Something has to rank No.1. Why shouldn’t it be you?