Things to know before SEO
Things to understand before SEO
There are more and more people running SEO campaign for their business nowadays. Some knows what they are doing, but some just be the classic trend followers – “since my competitor has it, I also want to have it.”
The world is round, things are fair. Those businessmen who have put full thought into it and plan well will be successful; however, the rest of it… Will end up with a lot of complain to their vendor.
I guess here’s some guidelines that can give you a brief idea for your business plan before you start.
Understand your Business Needs
Ask yourself, who are you in your industry? Who you want to target?
If you are a manufacturer, of course you are targeting distributor who can buy in bulk; if you are a distributor then you are looking for retailer; if you are in trading business then you need end consumers. Different target customer needs different way of approach and different marketing plans. Well you can’t be open a group name “ABC Sdn Bhd” under facebook and expecting to attract distributor right?
The next, what market segment are you targeting? Are you focusing in local business, Asia or worldwide? I guess everyone know it is not logic if you advertise yourself in Malaysia newspaper while you are expecting customers from Indonesia? 
If you are targeting worldwide business, no doubt the Internet Marketing is the best medium, best in cost-effective measures, to promote your business. Some businessman thinks that they do not need SEO because their business is too small and only target in local market. But it is not that fixated. Check out local search engines optimization. You can also market yourself only at your targeted regions. This will really open your eyes.
Understand SEO
A lot of businessmen think that they have paid a sum of SEO fees then they are assured for overseas business. Well these will be the ones who making noise when they get zero conversion throughout the whole year. This is absolutely wrong. The failure of SEO lies on many factors, which we will discuss in the next topic. Understand one thing that SEO only assures ranking but not assure on conversion. Give you a very simple example, did you ever come across a salesman from XX newspaper telling you “Hey Mr. Client, do advertise in our newspaper and I will guarantee you sales of RM XX!” No right? This is nonsense. If this will really happen, he might as well advertise for himself! In normal circumstances, they will tell you, “Mr. Client, do come and advertise in our newspaper. We have circulation of XX copies a day and statistic shown that we have X number of reader, ranging from what age to what age, with what kind of occupations. So I believe your advertisement to be highly exposed to this group of readers, and they are your targeted customers!”
Same goes to Search Engine Optimization. Again bear in mind, SEO is only assuring you in exposure but not sales conversion. High exposure can help to increase your sales tremendously. End of the day, whether you can get hold of your customers, it still boils down to how great you are in your business.
Have an Internet Marketing Plan
As I mentioned before, success is only meant for people who has good planning. If you simply do it, blindly do it, you will end up wasting your time and money but not getting anything.
After fact finding, you have knew what are your business needs, and also understood what expectation you can have for SEO, or online marketing, then now you need to select and plan.
If you are planning to have Search Engine Optimization, do get a reliable consultant, plan the effective keywords for yourself then the rest of the effort or maintenance is on the vendor side.
If you are running on Local Search Engine Optimization, what countries do you target? What is the most famous local search engine? General Google is the best in the world but there are also very strong local search engines like Baidu in China. Also please find out what is the requirement in order to be listed in that local search engine? For example in certain country, you need to register a company in their country or have a domain extension in that region to obtain better result in their local search engines.
If you are interested in directory listing, you basically will be listed amongst your competitor pool. It then leads to a higher risk of involving yourself into a price war. However, to certain industries, e.g. premium and gifts industry, where products are commonly standard and price is very competitive, then directory is a channel that should not be ignored. Well, some people like to shop for variety but some people are specific and clear to what they need. We cannot deny also some big organizations needs 2-3 quotations to compare before making a purchase. Even our mothers will compare the price of milk in different supermarkets!
If you are going for paid listing you need to plan your budget wisely, and also select your keywords wisely. Forecast the conversion rate then decide how long can you run the campaign.
If you thinking of free marketing maybe you can try Social Network Marketing like Facebook. Again, you need to understand your niche and do the right campaign to attract the right customer.
Mind Your Web Language
Technology is evolving too fast until people always forgot the basic. The best language to development your website, if you want to go for SEO campaign, is HTML. A lot of people will get shock when their consultant said this. “OMG, that’s too outdate. Can’t you have something more advance, like full flash or plenty of gift animation?” Oh no. Please don’t. Search Engine Crawler read neither images nor animation. If you display an image of a table, search engine crawler does not know that image is actually a table. So the best way is to explain it in text. You rather have comprehensive web content writing to precisely present your business, services and products rather than having full flash. It does not help at all in SEO moreover slow down your page loading time. Well, unless you enjoy starring at a loading bar.
Content Management System
I believe open source is now the very hot topic in town. With open source, everybody seems can be a programmer, or to run a IT business, because everything is free and what one needs is just to combine all up then sell. These people then charge you management fees, maintenance fees, so on and so forth. Well, what happen when you really need maintenance or support? I am sure you are not strange with the answer “sorry, this is fixed and we are not able to modify”. Then you are forced to accept what you paid for. My advice is to spend a little bit more and look for in-house developed systems. Well we should appreciate the programmer and the programmer needs to eat too. At least they care what you need, able to tailor-made to your requirements, and even if you need any maintenance, system upgrade or technical support, you are guaranteed served well because you are dealing with the programmer who develop your system. Be aware if your CMS comes with search engine friendly feature. CMS that comes with search engine friendly feature allows you to key in Meta text, Meta description and Meta keywords yourself.
Well in general I guess these are some basic areas where business owners always overlooked in running an SEO campaign. So, if you care of your business, and I believe you do, please do some fact findings plan smart in your SEO campaign. You do not need to do it hands on, but at least when you communicate with your consultant; you know what they are talking about. .
Select the right channel, attract the right customers. We channel the right prospects to you.
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