How Does Your Website Measure Up?

Many companies operate without understanding the value of their website to their overall marketing performance. Some feel that if they have a website, their job is done. The most beneficial websites to prospects are those that change frequently, have beneficial case studies and demonstrate how a company’s products and services add  value to a prospect.

Once the web presence is tightened up, one can’t expect to operate under the “Field of Dreams” scenario, “if we build it, they will come”. Promotion of the site in major search engines is essential to attracting the most desirable prospects. Proper web promotion really begins with keyword/key phrase selection. I would venture to say only 10% of all corporate websites are optimized correctly. The majority of websites we review either have no SEO or keywords included  only on the home page. Even then, the keywords are generic, obvious and not likely to rank well due to tremendous competition on the web.

To inspect your own website, open your website in an internet browser and under “View” open “Source” or “Page Source”. Near the top you will see “Title”, “Description” and “Keywords”. “Title’ and “Description”  become the two items that appear in a Google Search as the underlined  title and the short description that hopefully entices the browser to  select your listing out of a list of competitive options. These tags should be written with keywords, and should entice someone to click on your site for more information. Every page of your website is an opportunity for search engine optimization. Open subsequent pages and “View  Source” to see if you even are optimized beyond the home page.  Another classic problem is the use of the same keywords on every page. This is a web designer’s lame attempt at optimization and not very effective.

You can test this “lame optimization” theory by using your own keywords to “Google yourself”. If your company doesn’t turn up in the first two or three  pages of the search for your main product or service, you can be assured that your website  needs attention and quick!