panoptiblog

Three times in the last two months I’ve taken on small business clients who find themselves in an identical situations: they’ve spent good money for a high-design website, have generally been delighted with the results (ooh, ah — pretty!) and are perplexed when, a couple of months after launch, they see very low visitor traffic, or poor showings in search results, or both.  Even the least internet savvy business owners know that they need to show up in search results — and most have an intuitive understanding that the Top 10 sites returned in a Google search get the lion’s share of the visitors.

So why does it happen?

Because web designers are not search marketers, and very few of them are familiar with sound SEO practices.

In two of the three cases I mention here, the designers chose WordPress as their platform.  When we were conducting our preliminary research and competitive analysis for these clients, we saw their WordPress-based websites and thought, “Yippie — onsite optimization will be a snap!”

WordPress is great for SEO out of the box; using one of the popular SEO plugins, like Yoast’s WordPress SEO, makes it even easier and more robust. The plugin provides guidance for optimizing meta tags and on-page content, has options for applying basic indexation rules, generates and maintains Google XML sitemaps for you — all the behind the scenes stuff the designer doesn’t know or care anything about.  (Why should she?  She’s a designer!)

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With over 150 million users, LinkedIn is considered to be the largest professional network on the Internet.  A lot of people have been using LinkedIn for networking, job prospecting, and building credibility in their areas of expertise through the Recommendations feature, or by actively taking part in LinkedIn Groups.  But while many business owners understand how to use their professional profiles, only a few are taking advantage of the many benefits that the company page has to offer.

A study conducted by HubSpot in January found that LinkedIn is 277% more effective for lead generation than Twitter and Facebook combined.  So if you haven’t created a LinkedIn company page for your business, or only have a brief description and/or logo there, you are missing an opportunity to give your business a more robust presence.

Here are some of the features that you can take advantage of to make your business stand out from your competitors:

1. Blog RSS Feed and News Mention.  Aside from creating a keyword-rich description, you can add more content in your company page by adding your blog’s RSS feed.  This works well if you regularly post new content in your company blog.

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If you are a small business owner or are trying to build your brand or professional reputation via the web, chances are you are already blogging.  Hopefully you’re using your blog to share your expertise, offer advice and industry insights – offering your readers something of value and not just self-promoting. Your blog can open up tremendous opportunities for you. Readers may have questions about your products or make inquiries about guest posting on your blog.  Press and media contacts often look to bloggers to provide “expert” quotes, opinion or commentary for articles they’re writing, or may even ask you to contribute an article for their site, allowing you to expose your brand to new audiences.

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Most of the small business owners I meet with are aware of the importance of showing up in Google search results, and many use popular Google products like Gmail and Docs.  Some of them have even been venturing into the world of Google Plus, creating business pages on the new social platform to promote their products and services.  But even my savviest clients often overlook the free tools that Google provides that can help them improve their websites to better promote their companies: Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools.

The set-up and configuration of these tools may be a bit more than the typical business owner can deal with themselves, but it’s very easy and your webmaster (or whoever designed your website) should be able to help.  Once installed, they can both provide a wealth of information about activity on your site.

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In less than two weeks, Timeline will become mandatory for all Facebook users and business pages alike. Some folks have been stalling to make the change while other brands have embraced the new features and have become more creative  to get the most of this new look in Facebook.

So what are the major changes you should know about Timeline for your business pages?

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