Internet marketing

My lamp manufacturing business primarily markets on the Internet, leading me to spend much time, energy, and thought on how to best use the Internet and various tools available for marketing, selling, and analysis. It looks like we’ve done some things right, as our primary product, a music lamps for organs, is currently at the number 1 position on the first page of Google searches when the key words “organ lamp” or “organ music lights” are entered. We’ve not been quite as fortunate, yet, with other product categories. As an aside, we have not used pay-per-click marketing proving that Google does not necessarily give preferential treatment to sites using pay-per-click.

What we have done is to constantly “tweek” our web page content making sure that we are doing everything we know how to do to improve the SEO (search engine optimization) of our sites. We also frequently get a rating of our sites using www.websitegrader.com and follow its advice for improving our SEO. Several months ago, when we first stumbled upon websitegrade, we improved our grade from 15 to 60 in 24 hours by simply implementing what websitegrader recommended.

Any business relying on the Internet for business needs to constantly find ways to improve page content and SEO. It’s also vital to analyze the statistics for your site. Part of my daily routine is to review the statistics for all of my sites.

While we’ve not used pay-per-click, a strong argument can be made for this marketing tactic. Diana Ransom has written a nice Wall Street Journal article on the subject, called “Seven Ways to Make Pay Per Click Pay“.

The Internet is crowded with companies selling their wares. Those businesses that pay attention to the Internet marketing details will certainly rise above the fray.

Good luck with your Internet marketing.

Will Limkemann

eMarketing

I had the opportunity, at the last minute, to attend a fabulous one-day seminar on eMarketing. It was the third annual eMarketing Technologies seminar put on by the Key Entrepreneurial Development Center at Cleveland’s Corporate College. Although I had not attended the prior two seminars, I can well appreciate that the content of this one had changed considerably due to the rapid development of all technologies relating to marketing. Consider, for example, that a year ago Twitter was virtually unknown, yet most people in Friday’s audience now have Twitter accounts.

The tone of the conference was set by Rick Burnes of Hub Spot, whose premise was that inbound marketing has largely replaced outbound marketing. People want to find what they need rather than be blasted by advertising, mail, and phone calls. To make his point Rick asked how many people in the last month made purchasing decisions based on newspaper, radio, or TV advertisments. Just a few hands were raised for each media. When asked how many made purchasing decisions based upon Internet searches, almost all hands were raised.

Breakout sessions included workshops on on-line PR, social media, webinars, search engine optimization, blogging, e-mail marketing, and Google tips and techniques.

Kudos to the staff of KEDC for an outstanding event which attracted well over 200 people.

Will Limkemann

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Over the past few months I have learned a lot about search engine optimization (SEO). Well I learned enough to be dangerous. Truth is, the details of the subject are still as vague to me as how a caterpillar turns into a butterfly.

For those who know even less than I do, search engine optimization is the sum of techniques used in making web sites visible and friendly to Internet search engines such as Google. The theory is that the better a web site is optimized for search engines, the more people will discover and visit your site.

Much of what goes into SEO seems to be technical in nature and must be left to the gurus who know about and how to do such things. However, web site content is equally important. Like any other marketing material, your web site needs to be smartly written with text that clearly describes your product or service and includes “keywords” that will help search engines steer people to your site.

I have learned recently of a free tool that grades the search engine friendliness of web sites. Try it on yours. Just visit www.websitegrader.com and follow the simple instructions. You may be surprised, as I was when I graded my own site, how much work needs to be done to your site to get maximum traffic.

Yesterday I was talking with Andy Halko, president of the Cleveland web-development firm Insivia. He takes SEO one step further. It’s fine, Andy says, to have people visit your site. But what is really important is the conversion rate. Andy defines the conversion rate as the percentage of people visiting your site who take the action you want – such as request a call or literature, or actually buy something.

Your web site may be your best (and perhaps least expensive) marketing tool. It is the great equalizer in that no one should be able to tell by visiting your site how large or small your business is. But unless people find your site, and unless visitors can be converted into prospects or customers, the site is not working for you. That’s where SEO comes into play.