MediaVision Blog : Search Engine Marketing

There is the saying that beauty is only skin-deep. But what is the point of having a beautiful / hi-tech exterior with a boring / dull interior?

On the other hand, have you ever spent a marketing budget on well-designed brochures only to leave them in the closet and forget about them? What is the use of a modern, stylish website that appeals to your target market but is never seen be them? Just like nature, it’s all about balance. It’s important that your design and marketing compliment each other.

I read an article on Searchengineland about how businesses spend a lot of money on the SEO ‘exterior’ (search engine rankings) while ignoring the ‘interior’ (a content-rich, usable website) altogether. It’s like walking into an office that looks terrific from the outside but inside, it’s falling apart and is really sad looking.

Small businesses are often on a much tighter budget then their big corporate counterparts. And when you’re on a budget, you really do need to be smart with your money.

Unfortunately money is spent on what is purportedly important as opposed to what is really important. While SEO is beneficial in gaining exposure and driving traffic to the front door, it is not always the most beneficial place to spend the small business marketing budget. What’s on the inside matters just as much.

At MediaVision Interactive in Cape Town we are in the process of moving offices, so we can certainly relate. An office is a good reflection of how a business is run. If an office is light, spacious with decent furniture and a sense of order, it speaks volumes more than an office in a beautiful building that is dark, dingy and cramped up. It really makes a huge difference to how your clients view you as well as the employee’s business ethic if you are able to somehow combine both.

While a small business may spend money to be in a good location in a nice part of town in a building with a nice exterior, the inside can be a different matter all together. This is what many business websites are like when they focus on SEO and ignore their website design. There is nothing wrong with investing in SEO to drive traffic, but SEO is not all that is important.

Constant upgrading and tweaking of a website is critical; it’s very important that you’re website is not completely out of date. You need to show your customers that you are keeping up to date with the trends. A site design along with great SEO goes a long way. A great backend system combined with a user friendly and appealing front-end works wonders for your traffic drive.

Both need to be invested in, almost as much as each other.

First page placement is definitely important but there is more to marketing than SEO rankings: you still need to get the people that are driven to your website to buy from you.

Remember that your website is the first impression of your company…and that first impressions last!

At the end of the day, conversions are what are most important. And those high rankings alone are not sufficient to make this happen.