Not Every Website Needs Professional Marketing Services!
A recent inquiry from a member of the North Carolina Blueberry Council, Inc. asked the question, “Does my website need professional marketing services?”
In this case, the service to be provided was an expensive search engine optimization campaign. SEO is one of the most sought after website marketing services. The professionals that provide SEO services are some of the highest paid in the digital marketing industry. The reason for this is that a high page ranking on major search engines correlates to high quality traffic, which generally leads to increased profits, brand exposure or higher conversion rates.
In competitive market niches, hiring professional marketing services for a company website is highly recommended if your goal is to increase how a website ranks on search engines. Having said that, not every business can needs search engine optimization services or other traffic building strategies such as adword campaigns. In many cases, basic common sense and high quality content focused on your business, key products or services, are sufficient to create website quality website traffic.
Three factors that can help you determine if professional web marketing services can generate a return on your investment include:
Is traffic to your website dependent on search engines?
If traffic is funneled to your website by specific marketing tools, there is usually little, if any need to focus budget on search engine optimization, PPC or other marketing services. If your website traffic is generated by external marketing resources, search engine traffic may be irrelevant.
For example: A Home Owners Association or other special interest website may not require referrals from a search engine because traffic is directed to the site from exclusive community publications.
Is your business a provider of unique services or products or is the nature of your business both local and unique?
Unique businesses, products and services tend to have little or no competition when it comes to keywords and keyphrases that are “key” to search engine results. In those cases, adword campaigns or search engine optimization may not generate a return on investments made in advanced marketing services.
For example: If your company is famous for square blueberries, it is likely you do not have much competition for the search term, “square blueberries”. Going a bit deeper, if your square blueberries are branded and marketing as, “Ben’s Original Square Blueberries”, short of a competitors guerrilla campaign to capture your traffic, it is unlikely you need to invest in pricey pay per click (PPC), adword or SEO services.
The bottom line is that if you don’t depend on random search engine traffic for your company, product or service is unique, you can focus on creating the content your site visitors need to engage your company. I’d venture that in short order, searching for “Ben’s Original Square Blueberries” will point to this article.
Do your website visitors search your company by name?
If your company is typically researched on Internet search engines by name, just get your name right, often, in your website. In most cases, searching a company by name on most major search engines, immediately yields company website links as well as a company information box with contact information such as the businesses address and phone number. (Read tips on managing your local SEO)
Important Note On Poor Company Name Search Results
There are a few exceptions that could cause a company website to not rank well after a direct search of the company name on a search engine.
1. Your company website has been blacklisted by Google because of spamdexing or other “black hat” SEO tricks.
2. Your company website has been reported to contain malware or unauthorized/unusual redirects to websites determined to be dangerous.
3. Your website is so poorly written, your company name is not prominent.
4. Your company name is similar to other similar companies AND the market niche is highly competitive.
Example: Out of the blue I searched “East Coast Supply” and of the ten engine results, seven different companies were represented. The company information on the right side of the search results featured a ninth company. The second page of search results were irrelevant to the search criteria.
Important Web Marketing Term: “long tail keywords”
Long tail keywords are three and four word keyphrases specific to your company, products or services. Whenever a customer uses specific search phrases, they tend to be in the final stages of searching for what they are going to buy.
