Digital Marketing Review - Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Website Sales Review?

Succinct Ideas provides a Website Sales Review service, where our experts provide detailed analysis on the sales effectiveness of your website. We examine, analyse and report on sales-critical factors inside your website. If you choose we can also address many of these issues on your behalf.

We also provide the Digital Marketing Review wizard as a free Do It Yourself (DIY) tool for website owners who prefer to go it alone and gain an insight into their websites' sales effectiveness.

For deeper analysis, or resolution of issues identified in the Digital Marketing Website Review our experts can confirm, consult and even address many of the digital marketing items identified.

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Does Google know about your site?

This simple test is a quick and easy confirmation that Google is aware of your site. If Google doesn't know about your website - then your website is invisible to search and prospective clients will never find your site in a search.

The only way a prospective client will be able to see your offerings online is if they already know your website address.  That’s OK if you have handed them a business card, or they have seen your off-line advertising, but you have lost the major opportunity that the internet provides – being able to present your offerings at purchase decision research time

What results should I see?

Google's results will either:

• List pages from your site
  This indicates Google knows of your website. If Google does know about your site then prospective clients at least have some chance of finding your products and services by searching online.
  
  
• Show “Your search - <Your URL> - did not match any documents”
  If Google does not know about your website then it is invisible to search.
  Prospective clients will never find and then visit your site unless they happen to already know your website address.

What can I do to correct this?

You need to introduce your website to Google, and there are several ways to do this:

• Register it directly with Google
• Get an inbound link from a website that Google already knows about
  
  

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How much of your website does Google know about?

Often Google does not know about all of the pages in a website, and as a result, any information on those missing pages is invisible to search.  

This is a particularly insidious and frequently occurring issue, because website owners see that Google knows the home page, and they can view the page with the 'invisible' content so it is a fair assumption that the information is available in search to attract prospects.

What results should I see?

Google's results will either:

• List all of the pages in your site
  Google will list of your pages as search results
  
  
• List some, but not all pages in your site
  Google lists one of more pages, typically just your home page but there are missing pages
  
  
• List no pages from your website
  Google does not know about your website at all. Refer to wizard step 1.

What can I do to correct this?

Typically this issue is caused by an incompatibility with your website navigation system and Google’s search engine spider GoogleBot. Ensure Google knows about your entire site by:

• Provide internal links in the copy on your home page
• Use a navigation system that is ‘spider friendly’
• Create and register a site map

How do I find out how many pages my site does have ?

For absolute certainty about how many pages in your website, speak to your website developer

What if there are pages I don't want to be searched ?

It is quite a normal requirement to not wish to have certain pages available for search, such as system files, customer databases and password protected content etc.

A robot.txt file will ensure the search engine's spider does not make the folders and files that you do not want available for search
For more information on the robot.txt file refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots.txt

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Does Google know your business name?

Google's results will either:

• Find your business name & list your website first
  There may be a series of results with your business name, and your website is first on the list. This is ideal, because it reinforces 'internet creditability' for your business.
  
  
• Find your business name, but not list your site first
  Not ideal, but at least your business is listed
  
  
• Not listed
  Oh Oh We have a problem.
  Clients will make assumptions about your business' commercial maturity; its progressiveness; its attitude to information technology etc.

What can I do to correct this?

Optimise your website to improve your organic ranking for your business name.

This issue may not be a high priority, as in many cases organic ranking is focused on keywords related to your offerings rather than on the company name.

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What is my Google Page Rank?

Page Rank is Google's indicator of an individual web page's value, ranging from 0 (poor) to 10 (good).

Page Rank has a significant influence on organic search performance and hence sales effectiveness, particularly if your sales prospects primarily use Google for purchase decision research,

What can I do to correct this?

Google Page Rank is primarily influenced through attaining high quality inbound links.

Treat links as a key resource in your online sales efforts and seek them out from business associates, partners clients and industry associations.

Why Google?

Search engine preference varies between countries, but almost universally Google reins supreme, and particularly so in Australia where my clients are typically receiving over 95% of their search traffic from google.com.au

How can I measure the main search engines for my site ?

Google Analytics provides reporting on search engine performance for your site under traffic sources.

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Keywords - In your website

Search engines basically view your website as a collection of words, and prominently featured words are more likely to be matched with a search query for that word or phrase. Consequently prominently featured words will determine the search queries your website will attract.

If your keywords featured:

• Principally your business name
  This frequently occurs because we are so passionate about getting our name out there.
  
  While this is a valid approach, the opportunity in online sales is to present your offerings at the time of purchase decision research time, and the harsh reality is that your company name is irrelevant at that moment in time. Prospects are searching for a solution not a company name.
  

• A concentration of words unrelated to my offerings
  Website copy is frequently written without an understanding of the role and importance of keywords to search success. As a consequence the predominant words in a site often do not align with offerings; or the solution that a prospective client might be searching for.
  
  Accidentally predominant words are unlikely to attract genuine sales prospects to your website.
  
  
• Nothing in particular
  Similar to above, a lack of predominate words also indicates website copy that is not aligned to the business offerings.
  
  

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Keywords - Being searched

Which keywords are being searched is important input into deciding which you should select for your website.

There is no value selecting keywords that are never searched, but an appropriate strategy may be to target keywords in the results 'long tail'; where keywords are less frequently searched, but also typically encounter less competition.

If your budget allows, or maybe the keyword marketplace is not competitive you then target the more frequently occurring searches for maximum exposure

Ultimately the better the match between keyword and your offerings the better the quality of the prospect your website will attract.

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Resolving Issues

So you've used the digital marketing website review wizard and determined there are some issues with your site.
Now, how can you fix them ?

In some circumstances you may be able to correct the digital marketing defects yourself or with the assistance of your website developer, but some issues will require a digital marketing professional to ensure you get the best possible results.

Succinct Ideas can assist in two ways in resolving digital marketing issues:

• Consultancy
  We provide recommended actions in an action document for you; your web developer or your marketer to resolve the particular issue
  
  
• Resolution
  We resolve the issue on your behalf

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Copyright © 2008 Succinct Ideas All rights reserved

Last updated: June 6, 2008