Online Marketing – Plan Plan Plan!

We’ve been getting a bunch of leads from our website lately and I am stunned to see how many of them were clearly not thinking or planning when they built their website.  It almost feels like “Groundhog Day,” the move that is.  The first thing I do of course when receiving an online lead form is to check out the website.  What I am finding more and more of is more and more sites that are either totally or mainly programmed in Flash.  Any website designer programming a site in flash is either unaware or uninterested in the negative implications this has for search engine marketing.  In essence, Google and other spider-based search engines cannot read flash because it is devoid of any textual content that the spiders can read or understand.   The sites often have an intro page that is totally done in Flash which means it will never be successfully read by Google.

Back to basics … what is the job of the website?  If it is about doing business then why put an “out of order” sign on the website when it comes to being found for your products and services.  This is essentially what a Flash Website does for a business website.  You are left with a static brochure that will only be found by those who already know the url and those folks don’t need a search engine to find the site.

When I inform the online inquirer of the situation, their reaction is often one of frustration and even anger because they just didn’t know.  The most important thing is that they separated or segmented the design piece with the marketing piece.  This should never be done.  It is counter-intuitive for many who are unaware of the core issues involved in website design that directly and indirectly affect the ability of the spiders to.  They incorrectly feel that you first design the site and then you figure out how to promote the site.  What they are missing is the planning step; that is to know what the end result of the entire project is to be.  Thinking this through will generate answers to key questions such as:

1.    What is the job of the website?
2.    What do I want to be able to say about the website in one year, three years, and five years?
3.    Who are the professionals I will need to make this a reality?
4.    How will people find the site?
5.    What does it take to be found?
6.    How should I best coordinate this effort?

It’s about planning first, then executing.  The fix for those who have already created an search engine unfriendly website is to redesign the site so that is programmed and coded to easily allow the search engines to understand what all of your pages are about and how they logically interact with each other.

It’s best to find an accomplished Internet Marketing Company that is fully integrated offering website design, web programming, search engine optimization, seo copywriting, and all of the other sub-specialties that make for a fully coordinated approach to online marketing.

Arthur Cooper

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