SMEs focusing on online marketing

The existing financial climate has lead to exponential increase in online marketing and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) campaigns by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). With the continuous decrease in consumer demand in the last few months, it has become crucial to be on the top in search engine results or at least be visible at the right place.

Lot of businesses are reviewing their online marketing campaigns and are gradually moving from short-term artificial methods like pay per click towards the natural and long lasting methods like SEO and website optimisation. These natural methods result in higher traffic and long term returns as compared to the short term pay-per click (PPC) traffic. Lots of companies spend thousands of pounds every month on pay per click campaigns as the returns are instant and they hesitate in investing time and money in natural optimisation methods. The later is a slow process but if configured correctly results in attracting quality traffic on your site.

It is worth investing some time in SEO and working on the key processes like:

Keyword research

This is the key to implementing a successful SEO campaign. You should spend some time and prepare the best list of keywords for your business website. Too many keywords or phrases can increase your website's bounce rate therefore 20 to 30 should be fine. Try and localise your phrases as the conversion rates are higher for local visitors.

Content

The other important key ingredient for a successfully search engine optimised website is the content on the website. You should focus on the quality not the quantity. Content should be able to communicate the main objectives and your key selling points. It is important that your keyword phrases are evenly distributed in your web page content. Search engines like the keywords and phrases and a perfect blend can push your rankings to the top. But remember that excess of everything is bad, so don't overuse the keywords.

External Links

Search engine web crawlers can easily pick up all the external links pointing to your website. These external links are the channels that push traffic to your websites. You should spend some time in registering your website with the relevant directory listings. There are thousands of them on the web, but go for the ones that relate to your business and of course the reputable ones. You can also post business articles that can attract heavy traffic to your website. These Articles & Directory listings can drastically improve your website ratings. The easiest way to check the external links is by using the Link command (type link:www.yourdomain.com in the Google search box or linkdomain:www.yourdomain.com in Yahoo).

Sitemap

In simple terms, your website should be easily accessible by search engine crawlers. And a sitemap is a list of all your internal pages and links. You should always submit a sitemap as it ensures that search engines know about all the pages and links on your website.

An online marketing campaign varies from business to business. Although you should prefer using natural methods over the PPC marketing, but sometimes it can be more beneficial to spend on the later. For instance if you have a special offer that will last for a limited time, then it makes sense to go for PPC campaign. I will conclude by stressing on the fact that a perfect mix of natural SEO and PPC campaigns can give your business the required boost to cope up with the existing financial climate. I hope this works for you and I will be posting more articles on this topic.

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Nikhil Kamboj, IT expert, author and consultant, helps people interested in marketing their businesses online. For more information check out the website: http://www.itguyskent.co.uk

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