Apr 3 2008 10:22AM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (0) |
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I've written before about how important it is to have a good Web site, but this is a pretty basic idea. If you're reading this, presumably you've got the importance of the Web figured out.

The problem is that a lot of others do, too. So how do you make the most of your site? Well, you've got to get people there. The most obvious way is to make sure your site address is on everything ... business cards, trucks, job signs, advertisements, etc. (Heck, tattoo it on your employees' foreheads. It's a tough market out there -- people will do just about anything to keep their jobs.)

I'm constantly surprised by how many companies don't do these basic things (well, OK, the tattoing would be a bit extreme). This is the most important way to get people to your site after they know about you. But what about people that don't know about you?

They're the ones you need to find you amongst the mess of sites out there. If you're in a market of any significant size, you've got plenty of competition with good sites. There are a couple of things you can do, both of which I wrote about last year in a broader article on Generation X. You can read the entire article here, but here's the important part for this discussion, which talks about how two marketing firms help their clients maximize the benefit of their sites:

Even if a company has a great site, getting consumers there can be a challenge. KolbeCo works with many of its clients using aspects of search engine optimization, specifically a process by which sites use keywords to increase their likelihood of being near the top of search results on Google or other search engines. Search engine optimization can require a lot of time and effort to keep a site updated, especially in highly competitive markets. For that reason, Alpert says using pay-per-click advertising may be a more cost-effective approach for many smaller clients.

Which approach is better? Search engine optimization (SEO) is certainly more difficult. Getting visitors is easy. Getting the right visitors is the hard part. It's something most companies can't do on their own and you'll probably need a professional firm to help you with it, but it's probably the most effective tool. On the other hand, pay-per-click advertising (usually through Google) will cost money on a regular basis, but is pretty straightforward.

To learn more, visit SEO chat. Here's a site that talks about pay-per-click. Both have lots of useful information.