Annual Review Is Your Guide To Success On The Internet!

The Internet can be a perilous place. Every week we get a call from someone who doesn't own their domain name, flash source files, database, or web files. It is common to see businesses spend thousands on a web site, only to wind up unable to make a minor change. Do not assume you know this field because you know business in general. This is a new world and you better find someone you can trust. The Internet, more than any other field, is a place where you need a guide.

If you are starting out, take advantage of the experts. Listen to them. Here is our way of going about building an online marketing presence:

1. Review everything you are doing on the Internet now

Before we presume to make recommendations we do a review of what you are doing now. This includes all aspects of Internet technology, both those you are using now and may be using in the future. We want to understand how you do business, online and offline. We approach it as if it were our business and ask questions. Only by learning about your business can we gain an understanding of how to help.

We leave no stone unturned. We look at every corner of the business to find ways to work better and smarter. We encompass the immediate business (within the 4 walls), and the prospect, customer and vendor base (in the outside world) as well. We look at the mechanics of doing business, marketing, and communications. Our goal is to gain a full understanding of your business to best determine how to use Internet technology to improve it.

2. Take a fresh look at the product line

If you have one central web site you should think about adopting a more product-centered approach. Don’t' assume that Google will index your product pages to give you exposure for your deliverables. The Web is large now and chances are they won't. When we review a company Internet marketing plan we review the product line. The objective is to build an Internet brand around each product.

For example you may have a large site with a dozen products. We would recommend buying high traffic domain names for your best selling products and putting a site there. Where you link to the product page, we would instead link it to the product site. Now you have a main web site with several small product Web sites interconnected.

When you have an entire Web site about a specific product you are much more likely to get indexed into Google. If you pick up a domain name that brands your product with what people search for and put a site there Google will like it. It is conceivable your little 3 page product site will garner more traffic than your 30 page company site.

3. Make recommendations of what to do in the coming year

After gaining a thorough understanding of the business we will make specific recommendations of everything we feel you should be doing for the next 12 months. We draw from our experience with other companies to use those techniques that have been successful in the past. During this phase we come up with online ways to do business. Our recommendations may follow what you expect, but often we come up with innovative ways to do business you never thought of.

If you hired a consultant (with comparable credentials) to audit your company and make recommendations, you could easily spend thousands of dollars. If they were good it would be worth every penny. We extend this service for free. The result of this phase will be a proposal taking care of your Internet needs for the coming year.

4. Sit down together, review the results, and put the plan in work

At the end of the year we will sit down and go over each element, and make an assessment of how your site and software has performed. This annual review process deepens our understanding of your business and refines online operations. After a year we know what elements are effective. Effective elements are enhanced and developed. Ineffective elements will be fixed or dropped from your program.

Much of the Internet is based on recognition. You can put up Web pages forever without getting seen. The key to success is Google. You have to know what Google wants.

Designing a site and getting recognized are two different things. Actually they are opposites. The design process is a matter of creating a page layout and duplicating it throughout the site. This is how good designers work. Google, on the other hand, wants to see everything unique.

What this means is creating a marketing plan is a two-step process:

Step one is designing the site. This entails writing copy, taking or buying photos, developing navigation, developing a theme, and putting it together in an attractive package.

Step two is Google. That entails naming the file names, adding alt tags, adding unique page titles, developing a site map, and making sure the site is fully accessible (can be crawled).

These are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Both are a lot of work. You need both to be successful. This is why developing a high-traffic collections of Web sites is a process. It's not a brochure. It is constantly evolving.