Leveraging Google

Optimize your site so that new customers will find you

Can potential new customers really find your company and products on the web?

Imagine that you are one of your own target customers, and that you haven't heard of your company yet. You decide to search the web to look for companies that provide the products or services that your company offers.

Think of one short phrase that you would type into a search engine to find your company (not your company name). Now, using this same phrase, go see if you can find your company in the major search engines. Make sure you try each of the most popular search engines, as ranked by the usage statistics:

Google 32%
Yahoo 25%
AOL (including Netscape) 19%
MSN 15%
Others 9%

Now go to each of these sites and type in "Marketing Consultant Silicon Valley" and see if you find The 280 Group.

Chances are you didn't find your company (unless you are already incredibly well known in a specific category), and that you did find the 280 Group.

I'm constantly amazed by the number of companies that do little or nothing to optimize their positioning and placement in search engines. They spend hours agonizing over content and design, and thousands of dollars implementing and building their sites, yet they never benefit because new customers don't find them.

Now consider this. By some estimates GOOGLE POWERS AN ESTIMATED 76% OF THE SEARCHES ON THE WEB (largely because they provide results to AOL and Yahoo).

Your business may not be one that needs new customers finding you on their own, but I'm betting that's not the case. If you want to remedy this situation, you'll have to embark on a search engine optimization campaign for your site.

There are many factors to consider when optimizing your site. Here are just a few:

* Website architecture and underlying technologies used to build your site

* Content used and how it is structured

* Keywords you believe prospects will use

* Popularity and ranking of your site (calculated by Google)

* Making your site friendly to website crawlers

* Ensuring you don't make any fatal mistakes that will disqualify your site from being ranked highly.

Search engine optimization takes a lot of time, effort and expertise. Whether you decide to build your own in-house group to manage it, or to bring in a company like the 280 Group, make sure you spend the time to do it right. If you do you'll get the full benefits from your website, increase your traffic and capture new customers.

Brian Lawley is the President of the 280 Group, the Product Marketing & Product Management Experts. The 280 Group provides consulting, contractors, training and templates to help companies define, launch and market breakthrough new products. For more information about the 280 Group's services and toolkits (Product Roadmap, Product Launch, Beta Program, Developer Program & others) visit http://www.280group.com.Alysia Blog68302
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