Search: Rising above the competition

The art of promoting your products or services online in a highly competitive marketplace is a skill that can be easily learned and should exist in all website designers worth their salt. Without knowledge of search engine optimisation a site designer faces a tremendous challenge if he is to offer his clients an acceptable service.

It is all very well creating a stunning flash-based website with spinning, fading and interactive objects, but if your client is a corporate entity whose bottom line has a pound sign in its prefix or a new prospect as the target of his new website then your lengthy timelines are wasted. "Search is the bottom line".

If your clients' potential customers are looking for his products or services they are unlikely to crank up their internet browser and just type in his url unless he is carrying out some 'offline' marketing activities. The 'prospect' will more likely head to google, yahoo or msn (or indeed one of the many other smaller search engines). They will enter the terms that they believe will bring them the companies they are looking for. So if your client sells "25.4mm aluminium bolts" then you have to create him a website that will be found when a prospect types that particular term into a search engine.

But is that really what the prospect will type into the search box? And what about the offline marketing actitivity. What can you do to make assist with that?

The 'prospect' may very well type in "25.4mm aluminium bolts" but all angles have to be covered. He may work in inches so take this into account and make sure that the site mentions "1 inch aluminium bolts" too. Does the bolt company want people to buy bolts or does he just want to give advice on bolts? Make sure your page title indicates what the company's relationship with bolts is. eg. "Buy aluminium bolts for best price at XYZ Bolt Co., UK "

To assist with your client's offline marketing make sure his website is at the very least, indexed by the major engines. It is not unusual for a visitor to actually type the url into the search engine box so make sure the site is listed first for this particular search. You can also supply him with specific urls to use in his offline marketing that will allow him to track his campaigns.

Oh, and the competition... just make sure you can help your client to rise above them.