You’ve done all the necessary components for getting your web presence up and running.  You’ve created a twitter account, a Facebook fan page, you remodeled and branded your website, and wrote a blog.  You keep checking Google to see where your business ends up when you type in Keywords, but it just won’t climb and get onto that first page.  Now what?

Google will never accept money in order to put your product or search item higher on the ranking list when someone performs a search.  Working with Google’s search engine means you have to prove to them that you’re worth having a  high ranking.

There are a few things you can do.   If you remodeled your website on your own, pay a company who specializes in web re-design to help you, or at least give a quick consultation on the things that you could do better to draw in customers.  If you are up and running on all the social media networks, dedicate various members of your marketing team to be in charge of the specific areas.  One of the best things you can do, is hire a Community Manager.   This person sits as a part of your marketing staff, and their entire job is to do online marketing.  They will coordinate your efforts, live, eat, and breathe your brand, and put your name out into the world.  They will interact with your customers and THAT is how you become more SEO friendly.

Social Media is a conversation that happens on line.  Keywords are flung around everyday, and the ones that are used most often are the ones that Google rewards with high rankings in their search engine.  In order to achieve this, you must be active in your community and participate in daily goings on with your customers.

It’s that time of the year to review our successes and missteps in business – and what a humdinger of a year it was. While post-holiday slump sets in and everyone settles into 2009, take a few minutes and list your business resolutions – your own road map to a successful new year.

Ask yourself:

• Did my marketing plan get me where I wanted to be in 2008? Evaluate your tactical marketing plan for hits and misses. Use the hits as a jumping off point for creating a new, evolved 2009 plan. In a year where competition for consumers’ attention will be fiercer than ever, your plan should include new and updated creative to ensure you rise above the fray. Don’t back away from your goals of growth in a recession economy, but do take cautious measures to be sure your messaging is exactly on target – you can’t afford misses.

• What challenges are my clients going to meet? Few industries are immune to today’s economic struggle. Anticipate what your customers are going to find most valuable from you and focus on building that aspect of your business. It’s a perfect time to introduce new timely and relevant offers on your web site.

• Where can I trim my budget and where should I maintain? It’s more important that ever to win and keep your clients’ trust. You don’t have to undergo an entire redesign of your web presence to reassure your consumers that your business is healthy and thriving. The simple addition of personalized communications, such as a weekly blog, gives you a vehicle to speak directly and with authority to your target market about topics that have immediate impact in their organizations. Likewise, a Virtual Spokesperson — full-motion video representative whom you designate to deliver a spoken message — adds a personal touch without demanding a complete site overhaul.

Trends in online business, Internet marketing and email marketing are constantly shifting. Stay alert to the latest and you’ll be keyed in on how the competition is spending their marketing dollars. Those businesses that maintain their integrity and poise will emerge as leaders in 2009.

No doubt, it’s a lot easier to create an online business than it is to build a bricks-and-mortar storefront. No building inspections, remodels, fixtures, signage or utility bills with your web biz. No months of planning and waiting and budgeting. You can hatch an idea one Friday night and be in business by Monday morning on the web!

Let’s look a little closer at this. What do these steps in real-life business building do for your operation?

Building Inspections
Bricks-and-Mortar: Your architecture is sound, safe and reliable, and meets the highest standards.
Web:  Your web site is coded correctly to ensure reliability, up-to-date techniques, and online security standards are met for payment gateways.

Remodels
Bricks-and-Mortar: Your storefront is lively, interesting and current to attract customers who want to shop somewhere that understands their “vibe.”
Web: Your online business is attractive, well-written, always fresh, and cleanly designed; clients and visitors feel confident that you know your stuff.

Fixtures
Bricks-and-Mortar: Your business space is uncluttered and organization makes it easy to find the product they need.
Web: You minimize gizmos and distractions; your website is easy to navigate.

Signage
Bricks-and-Mortar: Signage is quickly spotted, easy to read, and portrays a powerful message.
Web: Your site is coded and written—optimized—for search engines so potential customers find you with ease.

Utility Bills
Bricks-and-Mortar: You can’t avoid these, but you can make your building efficient and take advantage of the bonuses of being a “green” business.
Web: Reliability and service are critical to keeping your business running 24-7. Ensure you have the best hosting service available.

Careful planning, attention to details, and keeping your customers needs in mind are key to success!

Before you know your competition – know your customers. What do your existing customers value most about your business? Identify the top three drivers that motivate customers to choose you. Then look at how your competitors meet those demands.

It’s not just what “they” are doing, but what they are doing well. You may not like the competition’s web site. You can definitely come up with a better design, better content, but can you beat them on search engine rankings? Are they utilizing pay-per-click strategies to draw a targeted market? Determine what works for them, and if you have a comparable plan for online marketing.

How does your competition respond to the market? You know what’s going on in your business arena. Take a look at the key issues in your world and check out the rival’s response. Every website needs to be fluid and ready to react to current trends in your industry. Be a leader.

Evaluate your own success – why is it working? Some strategies are keepers – before you ditch what you have for what you think is working for your competition, be sure to give yourself credit for what you’ve done right. Above all, you want to make sure you are producing happy clients, listening, and learning every step of the way.

Finally, keep an open mind. Reacting to the market, responding to a tough competitor or upping the stakes in the online battle for visitor-share doesn’t have to mean a huge investment in a website redesign. If you are on a tight budget – and who isn’t these days – you may want to make smaller, incremental improvements while investing in a plan to drive targeted traffic to your site, bypassing the competition.

There are very few businesses today that do not maintain some kind of web presence and most are doing everything they can to increase that presence as best they can.  Whether through SEO, PPC, or other methods the goal is to drive as much qualified traffic as possible to your website. But, what do you do once you get the traffic to the site. This is where well defined conversions play an important role.

When you plan your website or website upgrade you should think about what points of conversion you are looking for from visitors to the page.  In other words, once you get them there – what do you want them to do.  If its a simple sales site where a visitor can purchase and item and have it shipped or just download it, then an obvious point of conversion would be the completion of the sales transaction.  However, these sites would be short sighted to only utilize this one action as a conversion goal. A satisfied client is likely to return for future purchases, but life can be very distracting. If only you had an email list for newsletters or sign-up list for special offers. Then you send periodic emails or updates to clients to make them aware of happenings with your site such as sales or new products etc…  These types of sign-ups are excellent conversion goals with almost as much value as a purchase. Many visitors will visit a site several times before actually commiting to a purchase. These other points of conversion on your webpage will help encourage this process while gathering important information about your marketplace.

There are many types of conversions that can be of benefit to different businesses.  Here are few that may be of use to your business:

• Newsletter Sign-Ups
• Creation of  a User Profile
• Filling out a Contact Form
• Registering for a Course or Seminar (free or paid)
• Purchasing a Product or Service
• Request a Quote
• Forward Info From Your Site to a Friend
• Tagging Content To a Social Bookmarking Site (Digg, Delicious, Reddit etc…)
• Posting Comments to your Blog
• Downloading Coupons
• Clicking on Ad Sense Content

These are just some possible points of conversion. They are many more that can be very useful to doing business on the web. Think about what would help grow your online business and see if you can implement additional point of conversions to your page to help accomplish those goals.

Ever run across one of those web sites that has just about every bell and whistle that’s ever been coded? Thankfully, at some point web site designers got over the thrill of adding flashy thingies, huge take-forever-to-load ani-graphics and totally irrelevant background music that broadcast when you least wanted your boss to know you were surfing the ‘net. And aren’t we all glad frames are a thing of the past?

All those gizmos had their day, but the web is an evolving creature and a never-ending source of new ideas. So how do you know what’s so yesterday, and what you really should pay attention to?

The simple guidelines to follow are those that eventually weed out the useless clutter-tech and let the really good stuff grow at warp speed.

We’ve all got one, had one, or encountered one: the next generation of world leaders, current household opinion leaders, and affluent spenders. You got it: the American teenager.

Who is this stranger and how can you get their attention? Teens today are more affluent than ever. Responsible parenting has given them access to cash – through their own savings and checking accounts meant to teach them fiscal responsibility. Teens are more technically savvy and discriminating than ever. They are not as brand loyal as they used to be. They care about the environment; they look for companies with social conscience.

The teen population is most likely to go online and research a company before making purchase. Teens are influential in their parents’ purchases, too. Your web site design, email marketing and web marketing campaigns should have teen appeal, even if your product is aimed at the head of household. Here are a couple tips:

• Be sure your web site is rich with key words that will be indexed, so when teens Google a product, your site will hit their radar. Think like a fourteen-year-old. What words would they use?
• Add a blog that speaks their language. If you are selling a product that a teen would want (clothing, jewelry, music, entertainment, for example) help them out with compelling reasons that will persuade their parents, too. Even better: hire a teen to blog for you.
• Teens are bombarded with email. Add an irresistible offer to your email marketing campaigns to grab their attention. Be sure to keep in touch with teens who have purchased before and keep making offers that will get them back.
• Personalize! Know your teen customers and what’s important to them. Let them customize their offers!
• Play up your social responsibility. Whatever you do to help the world, be sure you let your teen market know.

Be sure you know the fastest growing, most culturally diverse group of consumers in the United States. 

The feds finally made official what most of us felt early last year. Marketing experts wrote about “How to run a business in a recession” in January 2008. Now, a year later, we are all looking at the world through recession-colored glasses. Marketing budgets are slashed or eliminated. We know; we work in marketing.

Take off the glasses and come out of the fog. Web marketing remains the most cost-efficient tactic you have in your toolbox. It’s time to squeeze the most you can out of the web – in fact, there is no better time than now. Your clients and customers need to hear from you now, more than ever.

One way to reach out is by adding a blog to your existing web site. Just like this one. A blog can be about any aspect of your business, updated frequently (once a week is ideal), and as fresh as this morning’s coffee. A blog gives you the chance to speak personally and directly to your audience about what is going on in any aspect of the world in which you do business. Blog updates also give you an excuse to contact your email-marketing list with a message, which drives traffic to your site.

Plus, a well-crafted blog will help elevate your search-engine rankings. An experienced business blogger will include key words about current topics that your customer base may be searching for. That’s the blog bonus.

Here’s one consequence of not keeping in close touch with your clients and customers during a recession. An email recently made the rounds discouraging people from buying gift cards for their holiday giving, listing a number of stores that it claimed were going out of business by the end of 2008. Much of the information in the email was bogus or incomplete – in fact, it neglected to clarify that some of those businesses were closing locations while opening others. (Read the email and the Snopes.com report).

Bogus or not, imagine the impact if that email was the only communication your customers had about you during the holidays?

Anytime in the month of January is the appropriate time to post a 2009 message on your own business blog. Remind your customers that you are there for them, recession or not.

A colleague recently posted on Facebook that she was, sadly and after many years of devotion, no longer a loyal customer of a certain big box retailer. She was refused the right to return an item for even a store credit, for what was apparently a policy not even the store manager understood.

When you, a small business working to promote your online services, products or real-world storefront, hear a story like this, your wheels should be turning. You can compete with mega-stores because you have something they will never have: the ability to take care of each and every customer as a unique and important individual. You’ve got the opportunity every day to to market directly to your competition’s customers – but even more importantly, you have the chance to catch the golden moment a dissatisfied mega-store customer declares, “I’m NEVER shopping at there again!”

Here’s how you can swoop in and save the day:

- Extend a price matching offer. It doesn’t have to be on every item in your store. It can be on a certain product line, or for a limited period of time. It’s a lure you are dangling in front of a customer who is ready to bite out of sheer frustration.

- Publicize your niche. Go after the customer who wants that one special thing that you do SO much better than a big box retail chain. They’ll love your personalized attention. They just need to know you are there.

- Shout your success. Post your favorite customer stories that illustrate how choosing you over a mega-store made it a win-win.

- Blog, blog, blog. Write every week about your competitive advantage, share a story, talk up a new product, make a special offer to anyone who mentions the blog.

All those dissatisfied customers have been desensitized to what it means to be actually “served” in a retail establishment. Give them a wake up call. Let it be you that gets their attention.

I’m getting an e-mail once or twice a month from a vendor that really wants my business. He’s polite, not too intrusive, and just a little pushy. And, I feel incredibly guilty when I am tempted to hit the delete button without responding to his message, even when that response is “Thanks, but I’m just not ready to move forward.” Why do I have such a guilt-complex over deleting his particular e-mail marketing message and not the dozens of others I direct straight to the spam filter? Because he once made the effort to drive 90 minutes to meet me in person.

The great thing about personal interaction is that there are so many ways to work them into your web marketing plan. Even if your clients are across the country, you can use webinars, web video, chats and so many other tools to get their attention and push them to your web site. I’ve participated in many conference calls, and find that my favorites are those that utilize a web-based discussion forum along with the call.

Marketing just isn’t something you do once, and is certainly isn’t just one thing you do. It’s an entire plan, wrapped around a strategy, encompassing the breadth of your potential reach. When budgets are tight, you can cut back on some of the traditional, pricey and high-maintenance items, like magazine print advertising and glossy marketing brochures, in favor of web-based marketing. Much more affordable alternatives exist and more are being invented everyday. But can you find a replacement for the rapport facilitated by personal interaction? It’s just one extra thing in a world of cutting back that might make your clients hesitate before they hit delete on your latest e-mail marketing campaign.