Leveling the Internet Playing Field

Messaging, Partnerships, SEO, Site navigation, Web Development

Duped by all the media hype saying that the internet levels your playing field?

Do you recall when it was widely published that the internet levels the playing field for small businesses? Media raved about how small business could not only one up their direct competition but also compete against big companies, which sparked a lot of small businesses to get on the website bandwagon. If you were one of these businesses but have yet to see the promised positive results, you might be feeling duped by all the media hype.

Well, the good news is that it wasn’t just media hype – they were right. However, the bad news is they forgot to tell you that there’s a process that must be followed to gain internet success. Just like developing new products or implementing new processes, if steps are missing, the results are poor performance or outright failure.

So what was the process I should have followed?

Outpacing your competition on the internet is a complicated process, but when broken down into manageable steps, the result is a website that meets company goals and expectations. The three critical steps: goal setting, navigation, messaging, and content, and monthly data monitoring are detailed below. But don’t despair if you didn’t implement these steps when first launching the site; it’s never too late to start.

Step 1: Goal Setting

Asking the simple question, “what do we want our website to do for us (the goal)?” The answer to this question helps drive navigation, content and call-to-action decisions.

Here are some goals that might apply to your business:

Grow my business by $900k within 6 months.
Establish creditability as one of the best sources for the unique value we offer.
Offer our market a one-stop source for equipment and repairs.
Acquire viable leads and avoid requests for products/services that don’t fit our business model.
Discover new markets for current products.
Provide easy to find technical data for my current customers.

Once goals are defined, you can move on to step two.

Step Two: Navigation, Content, and Messaging

Once you have your goals clearly defined, take a critical look at your site and ask, “how well does the site’s navigation, content and messaging help us meet our goals?” If you answered that it doesn’t meet 100% of your goals, then it’s time to get to work and decide what is lacking or missing and then assemble a web team to fix the problem. Depending on your needs, typical web team roles can include:

Someone who understands marketing; specifically messaging, brand building, and website optimization.
A content expert; someone with a strong understanding of your products and services to help develop a strong story and on-point messaging.
A graphics designer to elevate the look and feel of your site.
A programmer to implement necessary code that supports website parameters for appearance, functionality and marketing tactics.
Sales and service personnel that have direct customer interaction and know what customers expect.

In a small company, this team is often comprised of one or two internal people. Almost always, outside resources are required to fill any lacking skill sets. Your internal team should interview outside resources to confirm qualifications and fit with the team.

With your team in place, it’s time to create a clear project plan outlines activities needed to ensure the site meets its goals, and timelines and assigned resources to execute the activities. A project plan helps the team stay focused, so the project is completed on time and within budget.

Once the project is complete, now it’s time to protect your investment.

Step Three: Data Monitoring

With the goals set in step one, and the activities complete in step two, metrics can now be established that help you know if the site is meeting its goals, and defining the tools needed to track the metrics.

Monthly data monitoring is a must to stay focused on the results. Monitoring also helps to track trends and tackle any site issues proactively.

Examples of essential measurements are:

Customer search behavior – how do they find the site.
What do visitors do on site and how much time do they spend.
Your site’s keyword rankings.
Competitor rankings for your relevant and prioritized keywords and phrases.
Traffic trends and volume from your market’s region
Mentions in published articles.

The internet offers a level playing field, but the devil is in the details. Now you have a better grasp of to achieve website success.

As always, if you need help navigating search optimization best practices or redesigning your website so it meets its goal, give us a call, 1-360-834-2780.

AODD Pump Selection

Keywords, Search Engine Marketing, SEO, Site navigation, Web Development

What can AODD pump manufacturers do to help end users find the best pump for a challenging application?

The answer is simple; optimize product pages with the features, benefits, and specifications that end users need – let’s explore this further.

Direct Industry lists over 55 manufacturers. Each of these manufacturers’ claim unique benefits in their directory listings, but does this help end users find the best pump for their application? The truth is, not really. Directories are middlemen in the search process. Wouldn’t it be more efficient and cost effective to eliminate the middlemen and drive end users to a page on your site that is the perfect product for their application? By doing so, you will help save the end user time by quickly giving them what they need. You are probably asking, sounds great, but how do I make this happen? Read on.

Optimize for the search savvy

Search engine technologies have reached the point of providing excellent matches for user search terms. For search engines to rank your products well, they must clearly understand what your products have to offer. Web pages must concisely communicate product specifications, features, and benefits, and they must be easily navigable – no crazy, illogical URL structures.

Like search engines, end users have become more search savvy; they now typically use long tail searches (keyword phrases) to help narrow down their search instead of a single keyword search. Long tail searches that contain application challenges or required product features help produce the ideal pump in a search result. It’s much like dating sites where couples seek the perfect partner. The best match is out there, but if your website doesn’t illustrate user solutions in the way people search, results fall short.

It sounds so simple, and you are probably thinking, “I do a good job with that so why are my company and products not ranking high on a search results page?” But if your product navigation is complicated and your product pages don’t clearly communicate specifications, features, and benefits, search engines will not understand your site structure and products, and you won’t be able to outrank the competition.

Let’s see what we are talking about

Let’s demonstrate how it works. Try entering the following into a search bar or click on the following link, AODD, ½” ports, 20 psi, 5 GPM, Polypropylene, PTFE, stall proof, efficient, food grade. Notice that the search engine struggles to find the perfect match, but offers some good results. What got these pages top ranking? What can you do to outrank the competition and make the end user happy by providing them with an ideal match? Easy, make product pages relevant to the phrases people search for and simplify site structure, especially if you have many product categories. Do a thorough job of describing the value your products offer so search engines can make accurate matches and present the searcher with ideal results.

How does your site stack up?

Search engines are doing their part, now if you do your part as an AODD manufacturer, everyone wins (you, customer and search engine). Who is going to be the first manufacturer to take the lead by communicating properly with search engines, win new business and give customers a delightful search experience?

As always, if you need help navigating search optimization best practices, give us a call, 360.834.2780.

Distributor Guide to Website Success

Keywords, Search Engine Marketing, SEO, Site navigation, Strategy, User Testing

What is website success?

Website success means your site achieved its goals. For the purpose of this article, we’d like to focus on success that is measured by qualified lead generation – a goal 99% of our clients use – sounds simple right? Well it can be, but 3 things need to happen first:

You have implemented Search Engine Optimization (SEO) best practices. Meaning:
- Your site is found and indexed by search engines.
- Search engines rank your web pages on page 1 of a search results page.
- Your search snippets (page description) entice searchers to click through to your site.
- Your site provides searchers with product and service information relevant to their search inquiry.
You’ve user tested your website. Usability testing means your site meets the navigation and information needs of your prospects and customers.
You analyze website and competitor data on a consistent basis allowing you to make data-driven decisions about the site to ensure it meets set goals.

Website success: What it does for your business.

It generates a generous ROI.
It helps you better understand your target audience. Search engines provide gobs of very focused usage data, but it also gives your insight into:
- Human behavior as it applies to your business – this is important. What search patterns do site visitors use? What keywords do they use when looking for your products and services? How do they navigate your site? How long do they spend on the site? What are your most visited pages? Where did the visitors come from? And so much more.
- Competitor data that reveals their success in ranking for specific keywords, which ad campaigns they run and how successful they are and other internet tactics they deploy.
It pulls in leads that can be highly filtered to minimize and simplify response priorities.
It establishes company creditability and authority.
It warms up the customer experience by humanizing your website.
It provides you with market trends applicable to your products/services.
It builds and maintains brand recognition. And when accompanied by various marketing tactics and practices, will propel revenue.

What’s the process for developing a successful website?

Develop clear marketing goals – goals that are aligned with overall business goals. Ensure your website developer, graphics specialist, and internet marketing firm understand the goals and carry out their respective jobs with the intention of meeting those goals.
Understand customer expectations and develop your site based on their feedback. Searches have two sides; input and output. Search engines are becoming better at monitoring and understanding user behavior, and they are becoming very sophisticated at matching website content to searcher intent.
Understanding the keywords and phrases that drive qualified searchers to your site and ensuring all elements of your site (backend and frontend) are optimized and in synch. A search engine’s ability to match a searcher’s inquiry with relevant results depends on how well they understand a website’s content – this is where a lot of websites fail. If search engines can’t determine how to navigate your site and understand the information well enough to index and rank your site, prospects won’t find your site. How sad, since getting it right is a win for all players and the cost is low.

Get started.

So you may be saying, ‘this is all good for the big guys, but small distributors don’t have that kind of money,” which is a big fallacy. Optimizing your website, creating the ultimate user experience and analyzing the data does not require deep pockets.

Internet promotion, when focused on Company goals, provides you with the biggest bang for your buck. If you are still spending on exhibitions, print ads and paid directories, maybe rethink those activities by analyzing just how much business you acquire from each. You might have to reallocate marketing dollars, but you won’t be disappointed – the internet allows you to speak directly to your prospects and customers without excessive spending – the internet truly does level the playing field.

Site Redesign & SEO

Search Engine Marketing, SEO, Site navigation, Strategy

Thinking about a website update? Don’t forget about SEO.

We are asked the same question time and time again from clients, “we just went through a site redesign and our Google Analytics stats are down — what happened?”

We usually come back with the question, “was search engine optimization part of your redesign project?” The answer usually is, “our web design firm said they performed SEO on our site.” But what we’ve learned is that typically means they simply filled in some basic metadata and that was it — far from the rigor SEO requires.

Unless search engine optimization is part of your project plan, it won’t get completed, or if it does, as we mentioned above, it is very limited. The problem with limited SEO is like building a pump or valve with missing or flawed components — the end or produced product is flawed.

What a lot of companies don’t realize is that SEO is a roadmap for search engines. It tells your site’s story and how to navigate it can be indexed and ranked for a spot on a search results page. In a nutshell, SEO is what drives visitors to your site and helps them easily find what they need.

If you’re not familiar with SEO, a basic breakdown of the elements are listed below. Our next series of blog articles will look at each element in greater depth, so you understand why it is important and best practices to apply it to your site.

SEO Elements

Keyword research: understanding the search terms potential customers use to find your products and services.
Backend data (metadata): applying keyword optimized information to the site’s backend code that meets search engine indexing and ranking factors.
Sitemap submission: determining if your sitemap is correctly submitted to the search engines to ensure they understand how to navigate the site.
Front-end content: ensuring each web page follows the rules of a well-optimized page (both from a customer and search engine standpoint).
Internal linking: does your site’s internal linking follow a logical path and does it help educate and drive customers to conversion.
External linking: determining how well your site utilizes external links from authoritative sites.
Optimizing for local search: If local search is important to your business, determining how well the site is optimized for local search.

Need SEO planning before or after your website update or redesign project? We’d love to help. Give us a call at 360.834.2780 or send us an email at info@pumpmarketingsolutions.com to get started today.