Solutions, that's really what we devise for every client. Websites could be selling the same thing and have a whole different set of problems of why their website under performs. No matter that an online store has less overhead than a brick and mortar business, it comes down to taking in more in sales than is going out in expenses. Word of mouth has to be established through social media networking, that is the main ingredient that search engines don't provide.
That is an arguable point with internet start-ups that are able to draw venture capital. Amazon is the poster child of running huge losses before becoming highly successful. If pockets are deep enough to capture market share, reaching a volume of business to sustain and grow, takes a leap of faith to go past broke and see it through to success.
The small business online owner dabbles in pay per click and after a few months losses, gives up feeling burned on the experience. Another kind of entrepreneur takes a longer view of losing a manageable amount to acquire customers/clients that are nurtured to become long term repeat business. Incentive programs of all kinds are used to build word of mouth referrals that cost next to nothing because they were not acquired through advertising. When you think about how information is collected when a sale is made, it's really not difficult to keep following up and selling more services to the current clients while asking for referrals, even paying for referrals. In time, the negative return on pay per click is really a marketing expense to build a loyal customer base.
It is hard to see an online business through to profits mainly because a viable marketing plan was never launched or followed through on. Search engine optimization can help draw traffic, the question is whether enough of the traffic finds the site worthy of their dollars. So other issues come to play.
Recently, I reviewed a website and found that only the home page was getting indexed and the structure was so bad, that if you decided to fill out a form, it wasn't easy. If you wanted to call to ask questions, the phone number was hardly visible. If you wanted to send an email, you couldn't find the email. The meta tags were so messed up the site had no chance on its own. Come to find out the site was registered by the original hosting company in their name so the site owner did not even have control over their own business. The page urls/web addresses for each page was all gibberish so no search engine or human for that matter could tell from the web address what the pages are about. Imagine paying out thousands of dollars to have a site built and this is what your future hopes are based on.
One of the tools, is taking a basic blog through blog customization. This process takes into account a lot of research on keyword phrases before anything gets built. A common mistake made by business owners is not identifying the best keyword phrases that are likely to be typed into search boxes to find what they have. Millions of sites go for building a 'brand' when they don't have the kind of budget or expertise in social media to build a brand name. So naming a website something 'clever' is not so clever after all. If you do the keyword research, you are bound to find a couple domain names that are exactly what people are typing in. The advantage can be huge because a decently designed website can score built in traffic because there is an excellent chance of reaching a top position on the first page of search engines simply by choosing a high traffic keyword phrase for the domain name. It's what we do in building a customized business blog. It's what we do in determining the name to use for setting up a customized Twitter page. Same for Facebook customization. Build it right from the foundation and a business is working from a solid foundation that can get traffic and positive results.Deciding to accept a new client is a review process of the problems their business site is having that's keeping the site from reaching its full potential for success A deep review and tracking report that includes an initial keyword research is done. Then we devise a strategy on how to implement our website promotion program. We go the extra distance of evaluating the owner's website and providing solutions that will make the website promotion successful. A couple months down this path and the website owner has the proper training to be able to leverage the social media tools and link building tools efficiently on their own. From that point we provide hosting, maintenance such as updating links, and two important reports monthly that give insight and direction.
