Web Marketing Wednesday – The Mother of All Questions. “Why?”
by Chris Gandolfo, March 3rd, 2010 | Tags: web marketing | 3 Comments »Most business owners understand the basic concept of marketing. You need to tell people about your business in order to have customers and keep your doors open. However this understanding seems to break down when it comes to the web. I get asked on a regular basis why business owners need web marketing. So let me start by breaking down some myths when it comes to this mother of all questions.
Myth #1 – I have a website for my business. That’s good enough. People will find it.
HALF-TRUTH: As I state on my search engine optimization page, the mantra for the web should be; build it and they won’t come. Today your website is competing with hundreds of thousands of other websites. Even for local searches, also called location based queries, you probably have a few thousand other websites that show up when people search for general terms related to your industry.
Now if people search for your business name then yes, they will probably end up finding your website. However, the number of people searching for your business name specifically is probably a fraction of a percent of the number of people searching for general terms related to your industry. Don’t you want some of that action?
Myth #2 – My website has been up for a number of years. Doesn’t it have more credibility that way? Won’t it show up in the search results because of the that?
HALF-TRUTH: It has been proven that age of your domain does play a factor in where your website ranks with the search engines. However, that does not mean because your domain is old the search engines will give it more credibility than other sites. Older sites can inherit some barriers that prevent them from ranking well. This is especially true if your website has not been updated in a long time. Search engines like fresh, new and relevant content.
The Answer to Why
So now that we have dispelled these myths, let’s get back to the question of why. As with regular business, your website also needs to be promoted and the concepts that you use to promote all other aspects of your business are the same online as they are in your physical location. You probably pay for advertising in some form (yellow pages, TV ads, radio ads, etc.), you probably already network with other businesses and business people in your industry and outside of it and you probably rely on some referral business from friends and family or past customers.
All of these activities can be done online to market your website and they should be a continuation of your other marketing efforts. Telling people (websites) about your business (website) is the way to build a successful business website that is an extension of your physical location and other marketing efforts.
So what is a successful website? Join me next week when I cover key performance indicators (KPIs) and determining goals.
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Speak the truth! and I still think my favorite internet marketing video was the SEO rapper. since he has millions of hits I can assume that everyone here has already seen it but if not check it out.
Great blog post.Really looking forward to read more.