Every important endeavor in life requires time and patience.

Of course there are exceptions, such as winning the lottery, but most would agree these virtues are paramount to any worthwhile pursuit. Pursuits such as being a good parent, being fit, having good relationships or having a successful business.

Yet there is still an expectation that Search Engine Optimization and Marketing is the result of one single strategy or campaign. This “Single Bullet” theory doesn’t work any better for an SEO/SEM campaign than it would for a traditional marketing campaign. You wouldn’t expect big results from one radio or tv spot or a single print ad.

Let 2009 be the year you make a real, concerted effort to leverage the power of SEO/SEM to grow your business. Here are Top 5 Things You Can Do in 2009 for Your Web Presence. As a bonus, I’m going to add some examples of how we applied these strategies for our clients and the growth that resulted from those efforts.

5
Assign a resource (in or out of house) to manage Search Marketing
Search Marketing has to be someone’s job. Could be the Ecommerce Manager on your team, could be an agency or consultant or it could be a combination of both. But someone needs to own it and be accountable for it to have impact.

CASE STUDY
We were hired to help with SEO/SEM efforts for a company that was having some success online but was looking for more growth. Visits have increased by more than 300% and revenue has increased by 129%.

4
Create quantifiable goals
Please don’t let your only goal be “rank #1 on Google for my most important keyword”. This is a fantastic goal, but as an industry it’s important that we look, not just at the rankings, but the results of those rankings.

CASE STUDY
We coordinate SEO/SEM efforts with a local boutique winery as well as some offline efforts that direct traffic online. We create quarterly goals and monitor our success. We have not only met our goals, but we’ve generated more orders this year than we’ve had in the 2 years prior combined. By creating quantifiable results the principal and investors can see growth quarter to quarter as well as year to year.

3
Monitor results
Google Analytics is a great way to monitor results and learn about trends in your online traffic that can help you grow.
Companies who don’t do or just dabble in search marketing think that a handful of keywords will drive their online business and (I’ll say it again) ta da, you’re finished. Most healthy campaigns have hundreds, even thousands of keywords driving traffic and conversion. If you’re waiting on your one big word to make you famous (and again, there are exceptions, it may) you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to drive more traffic and, more importantly, drive higher conversions. People who type a search query such as “toyota prius trailer hitch” are going to convert far better than someone who searches on “trailer hitch”. We wouldn’t abandon “trailer hitch” as a keyword, but the product plus the vehicle make and model provide exceptional results for the searcher as well as the business because they are closely matching intent (if I type in toyota prius trailer hitch, chances are I’m looking for that precisely. If I type in “trailer hitch” my intentions could be many fold).

CASE STUDY
Conversion for searches that include make and/or model resulted in conversion rates as high as 80%. By focusing on on page content and link development for those keywords/phrases, we were able to more than double revenue for the year.

2
Share results
Share results with your team, give credit where credit is due (one of our distributors/sales people came up with some great offers for the tasting room that we pushed online and they created great results. Shout out to people in the trenches who know way more about the product than vendors). If you don’t monitor and share results people will make them up. Not because they’re bad people, but because their business acumen leads them to believe a certain thing. One of my clients said in an investor meeting that 75% of our online sales were from our repeat customers. Reality was that we had 70% new customers and great opportunity to spend some time creating relationships with our current customers and grow them into repeat customers, creating a better lifetime value of a customers. Let everyone know when you did (or didn’t) make your goals and talk about. If you just make goals, but never review them, continued goal creation could be met with a deaf ear. People get tired of spending effort on ideas that they don’t see come to fruition. Transparency into your goals and results is good for you, staff, investors and share holders.

CASE STUDY
Creating new offers is a big part of our quarterly plans and sometimes it’s those that are closest to the product who can create the right offers. We noticed a new employee had a flare for creating offers and merchandising so we now include him in our planning efforts. We’ve seen a 12% increase in revenue above projected outcome for online efforts due to improvement in our offers.

1
Make commitment to Search Marketing
Search Marketing works. As traditional marketing budgets are declining, companies are making commitment to digital marketing because of the exceptional ROI. Now is the time to make a real commitment to Search Marketing. Create a plan, designate a resource, create some quantifiable goals and monitor results. A little success will inspire you to keep your commitment.

CASE STUDY
I have 2 clients launching re-designed sites in January. One client is committed to the week to week evolution of her project, she’s engaged, she offers valuable advise, she responds promptly to requests. She works with Fortune 500 companies and governmental agencies and is well-versed in professional protocol and applies that as steadily to her redesign and search marketing project as she does to all other elements of her business. The other provides ambiguous feedback, rarely responds to requests, has unreasonable expectations, and changes her mind about design and navigation elements constantly. Though both clients will get exceptional service from our team, the engaged client will see results, not just at launch, but during the lifetime of her web presence because she gives it the time and attention it deserves. Think of your investment in search marketing like your investment in your health, your children or loved ones, other parts of your business and 2009 will be the year you get real value from your website.

GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Where else but Google can you get such great business building tools for free? If you have an online business and you’re not using Google Analytics, well you’re just plain silly not to (unless you have no interest in knowing what your visitors are doing on your site). You can create a report that breaks down your visits by their source, which search engine, which referrals, which links are driving traffic. More importantly, you can see which source is generating the best conversion and focus marketing efforts on traffic sources that grow your business. Break your sales down by keyword within each engine and make educated choices about which keywords you should be focusing on for your search optimization efforts. No matter how close you are to this data, I promise you there will be surprises and some great opportunity to improve conversion and overall sales.

If you want to learn more about Google Analytics, attend the SEMpdx Google Analytics & Hot Seat Review Tues, Nov 11th (I’ll be serving on the panel;) Just $35, great education from Google Analytics experts, great appetizers and no host bar at the Hotel DeLuxe.

GOOGLE SEARCH SUGGEST

Now Google is helping you fill in the blanks when you start a search query, type in “search engine” and you’ll see other suggestions such as “search engine optimization”, “search engine marketing” and “search engine submission”. Helpful if you’re a searcher and helpful if you’re a search marketer. Use this tool to see emerging trends in search queries as well as give you suggestions for keyword sets you may not be pursuing.

GOOGLE LOCAL

I’ll say it again, if you’re not using Google Local and there is any benefit in local business to you, you’re just plain silly. Go to local.google.com and claim your business listing. Build citations from other local businesses or organizations (chamber, yellow pages, relevant industry groups) and keep an eye on where your placing in local results.

GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS

If you have a Google Account, go to “My Account” under “My Products” you should see “Webmaster Tools”, if not click More under “Try Something New” and choose Webmaster Tools. Verify your site by placing a snippet of code and you have access to diagnostics, statistics, links and other great tools.

There really are no excuses, these products are all free. They take little or no technical expertise to implement. The hard work is making analyzing metrics and continued improvement an integral part of your marketing program.

Though our business focus is Search Marketing, at the end of the day our job is to help our clients grow their businesses online. It’s not enough just to help drive traffic to a website through natural search, the traffic to your site needs to convert.

For some companies, conversion is a sale of a product or service, for some it’s getting the visitor to call and schedule an appointment. Regardless of what you want people to do on your website, it’s important that you create a website that asks people to do what you want them to do. If you want to improve the performance of your website, do try these 3 strategies:

1) Be a visitor to your own site, try to sign up for a newsletter or order a product. Was it easy, what would you do to improve the process? Think about your website goals through the eyes of your visitors.

2) Look at your website analytics. Make this a regular part of running your online business. Look at your statistics, how many people visit your site monthly? What is your bounce rate (define)? What is your conversion rate (define)? What are people doing on your site? Where do people abandon the order process?

3) Choose one element of your site to test or improve. Once you’ve reviewed your analytics, choose one important page on your site and make a change that you discovered during your website analysis. For example, if visitors are abandoning after they get to the credit card page, make sure instructions are easy to understand. Do you have authorize.net or other respected credit card processing companies seal? Is there a link to your satisfaction guarantee or return policy?

Make a commitment to spend a couple of hours each month being a visitor to your own site. Create a process for champion/challenger improvement and testing of your landing pages. These simple changes can have great impact on your bottom line.