Online Business Optimization
July 12, 2009
By Larry Jameson
Online business optimization is an essential strategy for online business success in 2009 and beyond. The Internet has changed, and business promotions on the Internet have changed even faster. Top players like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter did not even exist just a few short years ago.
YouTube and other video sites have become very important to online marketing, and trendwatching.com has identified video advertising as the fastest growing trend for the future. For quite awhile now you and I have been seeing 15- to 30-second commercials at the beginning of a news video or, virtually, any other kind of video on major websites.
More than Search Engine Optimization
Online business optimization is much more than optimizing a website for search engines. While page construction still plays a vital part of business marketing online, it is a much smaller player than it once was. You might want to also read my article, Is SEO Dead…or Dying?
Your approach today must include the Social Media community. Back on April 8, 2009 (just 3 months ago) Facebook reached 200 million active users with 100 million logging on every day of the week. MySpace has 130 million users, LinkedIn boasts of 40 million and Twitter had 25 million in early May 2009 and continues to climb.
Single page complementary sites such as Squidoo, HubPages and Google Knol should also be part of an effective online marketing strategy. Major corporations now employ social media workers who do nothing but interact on social media sites all day long. Press Release (PR) media sites are equally important to getting your business message out to the public.
Social Media Linking
Social media linking strategies are not as important as having a social media presence. Yes, you can still get a little juice for your website with social media links, and forums provide an excellent opportunity to garner some link juice. However, being a good guy on social media sites can bring added value to your online business. You can provide pre-selling information about your products or services and answer questions in a non-pressure environment.
Traffic Building
Let’s step outside social media for a moment and think about other things you can do to generate free traffic to your website. Of course, you want this to be targeted traffic, people looking for your product or service. I’ll talk about article marketing in the next section. For now, however, let’s talk about being a good Internet citizen in places other than social media sites. Having a blog is certainly one no-brainer. Equally important, though, is being a good blogger. You should visit other blogs that post content similar to yours and leave comments. Most blogs allow you to link back to your blog when you post a comment.
Squidoo offers an opportunity for you to create a single page that provides specific information about your products or services with anchor text links back to your blog or website. And, of course, there are ways to promote your Squidoo lens that, in turn, promotes your other online sites.
Dozens of strategies can be found in the eBook, How to Generate Free Traffic. I’ve already written about this eBook. You can read a review by clicking How to Generate Free Traffic.
Article Marketing
Much can be said about article marketing and its value to your online business optimization strategy. Article directories are a growing segment of online information. This provides another opportunity to show your business as a good guy. A properly designed article that presents good, quality information without a blatant sales pitch can help boost your image. Today’s consumer has been over-hyped. Just think for a moment of those in-your-face Billy Mays’ commercials or Sham-Wow or free credit report dot com with the small print on the television commercial that says you must sign up for a program in order to get a credit report.
Don’t confuse article marketing with press releases. Article marketing should be more soft-sell. And you do get a link back to your main business website in your author biography.
Improve Your Online Business Optimization
Online business optimization requires a new kind of webmaster or web development team. Knowing the latest HTML, CSS or PHP is certainly not enough to optimize your online business. You can paint a beautiful masterpiece, but if you wrap it in burlap and put it in storage, the world will not know of its existence. The same goes for a online business that is not optimized for today’s online customer.
Think about this: Pew Research, in January 2009, cited some almost staggering statistics. In the four years from 2005 to 2009, the number of adult Internet users in the United States who have a social media profile increased from 8% to 35%. Narrow that down to adults aged 18 to 24 and you get 75% with a social media profile. Drop down to tweens and you’re nearly at 100%. Where are your future customers? If you still have a question about this, read those statistics again.
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