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Setting up a website isn’t nearly as difficult or expensive as it was just a few years ago.  According to a 2008 study by Barlow Research, it’s estimated that roughly 49% of small businesses already have a website, with another 13% planning to launch a site within the next 12 months.  With so many businesses having websites and more on the way, you might want to raise the question of how yours will stand out from your competitors’ and meet your business objectives.

The mere act of “having a website,” doesn’t guarantee success.  But make no mistake about it; the Internet is here to stay; which means that you need to plan your website’s future.

What is Search Engine Fuel?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or search engine fuel is the continual practice of making your website easily found by the search engines and your target audience.

As an online marketing consultant, I’m often asked, “What would I do?”

It’s important to note that your website should never follow what someone else does.  Your personal brand, reach, customer demographic, etc. is unique and therefore your marketing strategy should never be cookie cut.

Marketing your company on the Internet should be viewed no differently than how you have marketed using traditional media.  The only component that has changed is the medium.  For that reason, I’ve found that success with your website can be attributed to two things:

• Sending The Right Message- Clearly communicate, with words and design, how your company will meet your target audience’s needs.  Overall, your site should be equal to or better than your competitors’.
• Receiving The Right Traffic- Use your website to attract qualified sales leads so that your marketing objectives can be met.

Crafting the Message

Features and benefits mean nothing, unless they address the greatest “pain point” of your target audience.  The important thing is to address your target market’s emotional buying motive.  Customers will judge your brand and your company’s strengths and weaknesses from the way it is presented on your website. Here are just a few questions to help focus your efforts:
• How does your company compete?  Better services or products, best price, etc.
• How do you define your target market?  Are they young, middle aged, or senior citizens?
• Do they exhibit similar behavioral traits?
• What should your brand look like to potential buyers?

Driving in the Right Traffic

How do you to get potential customers to visit your website and help you meet your business objectives?  The answer:  A strategic search engine optimized campaign.

There are two components to the campaign:
• A properly search engine optimized website and
• Link popularity (getting related websites to link to your site).

In my next post I’ll discuss these two components in more detail.

I recently read an article from the Washington Post Blog stating that Google is putting end to an old prank “the Google Bomb.” If you are new to Google bombing, essentially its a technique that a group of collaborated website owners/bloggers do to get a website to rank for a specific keyword by linking to that site with keyword rich anchor text. Whew! That was a mouthful, but in case you are not entirely sure, perhaps the best example was when you could do a search in Google for “miserable failure” and George Bush’s bio was the first result. This was recently removed about a year ago, but it showed an important aspect to search engine optimization. Simply, links matter a lot when it comes to ranking a site.

I kind of miss the above example because it was a powerful demonstration to show prospective clients the power of linking and why search engine optimization is typically not a one shot deal. In any regards, according to Rick Klau, a member of the Google strategic partner development content acquisition team, Google now looks for these rings of links based on how fast they are built along with other factors. However, Bloggers and other web savvy individuals are already finding ways to work around this new algorithmic change.

It has been my experience that nothing is safe from hackers or pranksters and its likely that new Google Bomb will built given enough time. Regardless, i think its fair to say that Google still places high emphasis on linking and that building link popularity slowly is the best way to play the game for high search rankings.