Page 43 - MetalForming September 2010

tionality while using various browsers on different platforms, then submit your site to the top search engines and start a SEM effort. Consider leveraging social sites.
Usability refers to how easily people can make use of your site. Following best practices in site design for basic sites should negate the need to con- tract an outside usability study. How- ever, if you are building a comprehen- sive site, then such a study is warranted to ensure that visitors are able to inter- act with the site in an efficient manner.
Hitwise.com figures from May 2010 ranks the top U.S. search engines as being Google (72 percent), Yahoo (15 percent), Bing (9 percent), Ask (2 per- cent) and AOL (1 percent), with others making up the remaining 1 percent. Sub- mission is easy, and doesn’t require you to hire a submission service. For exam-
ple, visit www.google.com/addurl to see how easy it is to submit to Google. While submission puts you on a search engine’s radar, you’ll have more suc- cess ranking up by linking pages to rel- evant sites, such as where you may have a press release posted on a news site.
SEM is not to be confused with SEO. SEM is a paid approach to ranking higher in search results through pay- per-click or other online advertising and PR efforts. SEO is a strategy of continuously adjusting a website’s con- tent in a way to take advantage of how search engines classify information. You can source out such activities or inter- nalize the process and start your own Google Adwords campaigns.
Social media, while still dominated by B2C, can be appropriately applied in B2B settings. Social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter provide
opportunities to build an audience or following. Establishing a blog for your business is another means of pushing fresh content to prospects while build- ing search-engine relevance.
Summing it all Up
While these are some key steps to get you started, finding a good web devel- oper who can translate your vision into an engaging, easy to navigate site is where it all comes together. So take your time, check references and find a local provider for those important face- to-face steps during the development process. And remember, while it’s crit- ical that your site looks clean and pro- fessional, content is king. Focus on hav- ing relevant, easy to navigate and easy to consume content to boost your site capability in bringing you more busi- ness opportunities. MF
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