Here are 4 ways to get the love:

1. Relevance: Someone doing a search on Google is looking for information that is trustworthy, from an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, and includes original content. This original reporting, original research, and original analysis are top qualities in Google’s eyes, so create the one-of-a-kind content your audience is looking for.

2. Speed: Website visitors are not a patient lot. Studies show that users are happier with faster sites and less satisfied with slow sites, so speed is now a factor in Google site ranking. Make sure your web coding is lean and mean, uses the latest web standards, and uses CSS to minimize bulked-up code.

3. Comprehensiveness: Web users want to get all the information they need in one place. Include plenty of helpful information about your subject and links between content on your site so users can find everything they need without having to search elsewhere. Be smart about your tags, meta descriptions, and site architecture, and include relevant keywords in your copy to help Google find your content and rank it higher.

4. Freshness: Web searchers are looking for the latest information on a given topic, so Google ranks sites that have regularly updated content higher. While Google will crawl virtually every page on the web eventually, the more frequently your content changes, the faster Google comes back. Regularly create content with catchy headlines and cool stories covering the latest information on your specialties.

Remember: If Google doesn’t deliver, searchers will go elsewhere to find what they need, so it’s in Google’s best interest to deliver what searchers want: relevance, speed, comprehensiveness, and freshness. Make sure your site delivers these and Google will love your site.

Resources:

Learn why you shouldn’t launch your website without SEO and the art and science of SEO. Catch details about getting Google to love your site in the Marketing Profs class What Marketers Should Know About Google. And Google Webmaster Central is a great place to get all the inside help you need to optimize your site and keep your loving relationship with Google going strong.

One of the reasons for including more online content is that the consumption of printed white papers, case studies, and product brochures/datasheets has declined. Podcast and video consumption has stayed steady, but respondents have increased their use of company web pages, e-books, social media sites, blog posts, and Flash or PowerPoint presentations when buying technology.

Corporate websites remain the primary location from which technology purchasers get information. One hundred percent of respondents to the survey reported reading company web content to evaluate a technology purchase. They arrived at the company website by searching (77%), through a link from a vendor email (46%), through a link from a colleague (34%), or via social media (19%).

Since search is so important to getting customers to this most influential channel, companies should make sure their websites are optimized for search, refreshed regularly, and linked to from all their other assets and communications.

To learn more about the study, register to download the free Eccolo Media 2011 B2B Technology Collateral Survey Report.

Our client’s challenge:

The Santa Cruz Chamber of Commerce had a long-term goal of redesigning and reorganizing its outdated website to better connect the Chamber businesses with the people who work, live, and visit Santa Cruz. The Chamber sought a new logo and brand identity that incorporated both the history and modernity of this local institution. New exciting and creative risks are taking place within the organization and the Chamber wanted to capture the spirit and imagination of its membership, and deliver more member benefits and results than ever before.

The Scott Design solution:

Scott Design redesigned the entire Chamber branding, from the logo to the website to the e-mails, and gave collateral a fresh, upbeat look. The site was updated to include new functionality, a cleaner navigation, and valuable SEO-optimized content. The site has become the go-to source for local Santa Cruz business news and resources, with visits to the site and page views more than doubling since the previous year. The new website, e-mail campaigns, and collateral have all helped attract new members.

Awards:

• Outstanding Achievement Interactive Media Award  — Non-Profit Website
• Award of Distinction, Communicator Awards — Association Website
• Silver Davey Award — Association Website
• Bronze Award, Horizon Interactive Awards — Non-Profit Website

Consumers research online before shopping

In the Online Shopper Intelligence Study, compete.com found that 60% of consumers research their purchases online first.

Also interesting to note, however, is that there is variability in search behavior across different industries. For example, only 12% of apparel shoppers use search, relying more on emails, websites, mailing, and ads from retailers.

And 59% of electronics shoppers rely more on websites than on search.

One of the most interesting statistics in an ongoing consumer tracking study conducted by BIA/Kelsey is that 97% of consumers use online media to search for local businesses and products. Among those surveyed, 90% use search engines, 48% use internet yellow pages and directories, 24% use vertical sites, and 42% use comparison shopping sites.

In-store shoppers use search before and during shopping

Consumers also search online before doing in-store shopping. According to a survey of consumer retail spending and trends from Deloitte, 75% of consumers look online for store, price, or product information before or during in-store shopping. More than half use social networking sites to research and interact with retailers, find out about promotions, and read reviews, with half of consumers saying that an online product review has influenced their decision on whether to buy a product.

Users search for local stores and products

According to Google, 20% of Google searches are related to local and 30% of mobile searches are local. Google Place pages appear before organic search results on results pages and visitors use this information to find out more about your company, map your location, and learn about your products or services. Listings in online directories and online yellow pages can also help your business appear in higher rankings.

How do you take advantage of these stats?

• Optimize your website for search
• Make sure your free Google Places page is correct and complete
• List your business in local online directories
• Optimize your site for mobile devices or have a mobile website
• Keep information on your Facebook page up to date
• Know your audience so you can focus on the online resources your customers use most

The Google “Grow Your Business Online” events are being held in locations around the world and are a great source of the latest information about online search. I highly recommend attending if one comes to a city near you!

B2B Marketing Tactic Increases/Decreases

According to a Fusion b2b survey of business-to-business (B2B) marketers, 66 percent of marketers are planning to increase marketing activities and budgets this year, with 5.5 percent planning to decrease marketing activities or budgets and 28.5 percent planning to maintain marketing activities and budgets.

Most respondents plan to increase Internet, social media, PR, and promotions, while 70 percent of respondents plan to decrease advertising and 65 percent plan to reduce trade show expenditures. For more information, see the Business-to-Business Marketing 2011 Outlook Survey Results.

The effectiveness of website design, management, and optimization tactics

Since a website is the main hub of marketing and conversion for companies, marketers should make their websites as effective as possible. Marketing Sherpa interviewed nearly 1,000 B2B marketers to find out which website optimization tactics were the most effective. Marketers put website landing pages, website design, website SEO, and microsites at the top of the list for most effective ways to optimize their Internet presence. Adding video, social media, live chat, click-to-call, and personalization were considered less effective. You can read more in Best website design, management and optimization tactics for 2011.

A well-implemented marketing strategy includes ways to make it easier for customers to find your solutions online and be converted into customers. Although there are countless pressures during difficult economic times, marketers who keep their eye on their priorities will emerge even stronger from the downturn than their competition.

It is even more important than ever that your marketing strategy produces both immediate and long-lasting positive results. The key to successful development and implementation of a marketing strategy is to focus on a set of priorities and then ensure that all your marketing tactics directly support your priorities.

What’s the big deal about online marketing?

• 90%+ of people search online before making decisions, big and small
• Search engines find content, categorize it, and connect people with what they need
• To get found, you need online content that’s relevant and fresh
• Some of the steps in building your online presence are “do-it-yourself” and some are “do-not-try-this-at-home” so don’t be afraid to ask for help if you need it

Building blocks of an online marketing strategy

• Build a foundation of a robust website
• Add the three pillars of search marketing, e-mail marketing, and web analytics
• Cap it off with a social media strategy.

More info

Building blocks:  Your website

Top 5 reasons your website is the foundation of your plan

• 60% of prospects will visit your website
• Search engines direct visitors to your site
• First introduction might be online
• Prospects use traditional websites
• You control the information

More info

3 important things to consider

• Usability – architecture, navigation, and analytics
• Content – clear, simple, easy to contact you
• Design – stand out but be appropriate, use only graphics that support your messaging

More info

6 main sections your site should have

• Home page
• Products or Services
• About Us
• Contact Us
• Custom Information
• Dynamic Content

More info

Building blocks:  Search

A search strategy is the first pillar of your plan

• Create content that targets your customers’ needs
• Use words customers search for, including negatives
• Long-tail keywords improve results and target your audiences
• Update content often
• Create compelling, link-worthy content

More info

SEO: Getting links to your site

• Link to your site from social networks
• Comment on blogs and online communities
• Add yourself to online directories
• Use social bookmarking
• Submit online press releases
• Answer questions online
• Ask for customer reviews
• Ask for links from influencers

More info

SEO: Technical recommendations

• Find keywords relevant to your business, include keywords in the page content, write naturally
• Properly name pages, 
meta data, headlines, 
URLs, and links
• Make clean, organized 
coding a priority
• Give it time

More info

Building blocks:  E-mail

• E-mail is the second pillar of your plan
• Users overwhelmingly prefer e-mail as a contact
• E-mail keeps customers informed about new products and solutions, or industry news.
• E-mail offers a great return on your investment

E-mail best practices

• Build your list with customers, colleagues, people you meet, and online signups
• Create a master calendar and send a combination of newsletters, promotions, announcements
• Get results with well-designed, straightforward, compelling, brief e-mails
• Use analytics, testing, and segmenting to target e-mails

More info

Other online marketing tactics to consider

• Online ads – banner ads, PPC, sponsored content
• Video and podcasts
• Flash demos
• SMS text advertising
• Branded apps

Building blocks:  Analysis

Analysis is the third pillar of your plan

• Set up tools to get the most accurate analytics
• Web analytics
• SEO analytics
• E-mail analytics
• Monitor your online presence, mentions, links, activity, competitors, industry
• Test and refine

Use analytics to refine your site, SEO, and e-mails

• Fine tune your website and SEO
• Dashboard, Visitors Overview, Traffic Sources Overview, Keywords, Top Content
• Improve your e-mail campaigns
• How many were sent, received, and bounced
• How many people opened, clicked, forwarded, opted out, signed up
• What was clicked
• Compare to past campaigns
• Test and refine

More info

Monitoring your online presence for free

• Setup an RSS reader to watch keywords, companies, people, Twitter #hashtags, LinkedIn answers
• Check LinkedIn and Facebook pages and groups
• Search for terms on Addict-o-matic
• Use grader.com to rank yourself
• Use Tweetdeck for real time info
• Respond to issues before they’re problems, find new customers, build your reputation

More info

Building blocks:  Social Media

Social media is the capstone of your plan

• Social media enhances all of your other efforts.
• Engaged customers are more likely to buy
• Social media influences search results
• Links drive traffic to your website
• Conversations about you are already going on online

More info

Top social media tools

• LinkedIn – Profiles, Companies, Groups, Answers
• Facebook  Profiles, Pages, Groups
• Twitter       Profiles, Companies
• Blogs    RSS reader
• Local search – Google Places, Yahoo!, bing, getlisted. org
• Review sites – Yelp, TripAdvisor, industry sites
• Social bookmarking – StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit
• Other – forums, wikis, industry or interest group websites, local websites, local organizations

More info

5 Quick steps to get online

• Sign up for membership on targeted sites
• Fill out the basic information (you can add more later)
• Find groups of peers and/or customers
• Listen and get a feel for discussion etiquette
• Add value to conversations

More info

Maintaining your online brand

Branding 101

• Keep your design and content consistent
• Maintain a unified design on your website, e-mails, social media sites, and presentations
• Make sure you develop guidelines, image and copy assets, instructions, 
written strategy
• Provide feedback on all marketing pieces anddon’t allow anything off-brand.

More info

Branding and messaging across multiple media

• When you develop online sites, pages, and profiles, be sure to use consistent graphics and messaging.
• Develop a set of images you can use for each platform that are optimized for each use
• Develop a set of copy blocks you can use in a variety of lengths
• Keep a list of sites to update when you make a change in messaging or imagery, when you launch a new product, or when you have news to share.
• Keep things consistent everywhere!

Download the presentation

“Building an Online Marketing Plan” is available in a variety of formats:

• PowerPoint Show (ZIP 15.6 MB)
• Keynote Presentation, with notes and links (ZIP 12.8 MB)
• PDF file, with links (ZIP 12.6 MB)
• Slideshare Presentation, with links (Slideshare)

Although art and science are sometimes thought of as opposites, you can use the artistic process and the scientific method together to improve your website through SEO experiments.

Step 1: Contemplate/Question

The beginning of your SEO process should help define what you’re hoping to accomplish. For example, you might seek more visitors to your site, greater awareness of your products, an increase in responses to promotions, more downloads, or new audiences.

Art: Consider different goals, brainstorm about ideas, and create a rough sketch of what you’d like to accomplish with your SEO experiments.

Science: Ask the who, what, where, when, why, and how questions about improving the performance of your site.

Step 2: Observe/Research

Once you have come up with some questions you’d like to answer, do some initial research.

Art: Identify the social media sites where your customers and key influencers in your industry are active and participate in online conversations. Check out the websites of your competitors and see what words, images, and technologies they’re using to reach customers. Talk with your established customers and ask which words and phrases they would use to find your site. Do some qualitative analysis of online conversations about your company to find out whether they’re positive or negative. Research other industries that have something in common with your market and see how they do SEO.

Science: Using Google Analytics, establish baselines so you can compare the results of your SEO experiments, before and after. Measure activity and time spent on your site, find out where your visitors are coming from, and measure the number of comments left on your blog. Do a thorough analysis of the key phrases visitors use to reach your website, the types of technologies they use, and where they come from.

Step 3: Organize/Hypothesize

Create plans so that you can tackle your experiments in an organized fashion.

Art: Don’t limit yourself to ideas you found in your research. Try to think of all the different experiments you could do to improve your SEO, not just those you’ve tried or that your competitors have tried. Consider experimenting with new site content, blogging, integrating social media, incorporating keyword phrases, changing design and layout of your site, and updating images. Make sure your experiments are designed to improve site readability, site usability, and to attract and engage your audience.

Science: Frame your hypothesis: “If _____[I do this] _____, then _____[this]_____ will happen.” Make your experiments easily measurable and constructed in a way to help you answer your original questions about how best to improve site performance.

Step 4: Create/Experiment

Now it’s time to test each of your hypotheses by doing an experiment. If you want to conduct a fair test and see which SEO experiments yield the best results, make sure that you change only one thing at a time while keeping all other conditions the same. If you’re more interested in getting results than in figuring out exactly which tactic was most successful, go ahead and implement a group of changes all at the same time.

Art: Create new content, update your site design, and incorporate new technologies that will attract your target audience. Be descriptive and clear in your writing, keeping it readable, and include content that is unique. Focus on key phrases that a search engine user might type and/or a site visitor seeks when scanning your web pages. Write headlines, sub-headlines, and opening paragraphs that include key phrases, keeping a natural flow to your writing. Move items around on your pages, especially your landing pages, to find the most effective placement of graphics and text. Incorporate a blog or add feeds from social media to see if those improve your site’s search results, and consider online PR distribution. Make sure all the changes you implement reflect your brand personality and visual style.

Science: It’s important to be consistent, logical, and thorough when experimenting with SEO. You should update title tags, meta tags, meta descriptions, URLs, navigation links, and headlines, and the first paragraph of copy to incorporate keywords and phrases consistently on each page. Use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to program your site, include H1 and H2 tags, and do not use Flash for navigation. Make sure PDF files and images are tagged with keywords. Set up different URLs if you’d like to monitor exactly where your best results are coming from. And, be sure to submit an updated XML sitemap using Google Webmaster Tools.

Step 5: Critique/Analyze

Once your SEO experiments are complete, you should collect your measurements and analyze them to see if your hypotheses are true or false.

Art: Apply a critical eye to see how your experiments turned out. Is there more participation on social media sites and have the comments and conversations on your blog improved? Have you gotten any feedback from existing customers or prospects? Have you been more visible in your industry due to any of your experiments? See if you can determine which of your experiments yielded the best results.

Science: Measure the results of your experiments using the baseline numbers for reference. Check your analytics to track changes in visits, downloads, clicks, sales, or any of the other activities you set up to measure.

Step 6: Refine/Iterate

Scientists sometimes find that their hypothesis was false, and they create a new hypothesis and start the scientific process over again. Even if they find that their hypothesis was true, they may want to test it again in a new way, or change the experiment to account for new conditions. New information or thinking might cause a scientist to back up and repeat steps at any point during the process. You should do the same to continually improve your site’s SEO.

Art: Depending on the results of your experiments, you might want to continue with some of the same refinements, or consider some new tactics. You might want to add customer reviews to your site, work on building links from influencers in your industry, use social bookmarking to gain exposure, step up your Twitter involvement, or increase your blogging.

Science: Search engine optimization is an investment that requires patience and an ongoing commitment. It sometimes takes 2-3 months for SEO initiatives to have an impact. Continue to track what’s working and what’s not, and implement changes as time goes on to continue to improve your site’s performance.

Setting up analytics on your website can be as easy as adding a free Google Analytics code to the pages of your website. And most e-mail service providers generate data and reports for each mailing that you send. The key is to get these analytics programs in place as early as you can so that you can use the data they generate to continually improve your online communications.

Fine-tune your website and SEO

Google Analytics is a free suite of analysis tools that’s widely used to capture and display information about how visitors are using your site. Using analytics, you can find out what’s appealing to your audience, pull them into your site, and get them to click.

From the Google Analytics dashboard, you can get a great overview of how your site is performing over time. Detailed reports let you drill down for more detailed information about every aspect of your site’s performance. And you can have Google Analytics e-mail you reports on a regular basis so you don’t forget.

Google Analytics will give you as much information as you want, or you can stick to the high-level analytics. To see more details on any report, just click the “view full report” link.

Reports that you should monitor regularly are the following:

• Dashboard – See whether the number of visits is going up or down, see a map of where your visitors come from, and see which pages are most popular.
• Visitors overview – See how many visitors you have and how much time they’re spending on your site, and see which browsers and connection speeds your visitors have to make sure your site is optimized for all your audiences.
• Traffic sources overview – See whether your visitors arrived at your site from searches, directly, or from links on other websites.
• Keywords – See which words visitors used on search engines to find your site, plus what they did once they landed on your site.
• Top content –  See which pages get the most traffic on your site.

Depending on your business, you may want to run additional Google Analytics reports. For example, you might want to know what country your visitors come from or what time they are visiting your site. Perhaps you’d want a visual representation of exactly where users are clicking on your web pages.

Improve your e-mail campaigns

After you send an e-mail blast, you should plan on analyzing the results using the analytics that most e-mail services provide to learn how your audience is responding to the communications you’ve sent.  You can see how many people opened your e-mail, and who they are.  You also can check which links generate the most interest, and which campaigns are most effective.

For each e-mail campaign, you should analyze the following:

• How many e-mails were sent, received, and bounced due to bad e-mail addresses
• How many people opened the e-mail, clicked on a link, forwarded your e-mail, and opted out or signed up
• Which links and graphics received clicks
• A comparison of this campaign and past campaigns to identify differences and the reasons for them

Taking a close look at e-mail analytics lets you spot trends that help you refine and improve your e-mail marketing plans. If you get too many unsubscribes, you might be sending your e-mails too often. If none of your graphics are getting clicked, many of your subscribers might have their images turned off and you should design your e-mails to rely less on images and more on text links. If your response rate for a particular e-mail was particularly good, you should see how it differs from less successful campaigns.

Test and refine

One of the great things about having a robust analytics solution in place is that you can test the results you get by updating your content or making multiple versions of your content. For example, you could take a look at which words are leading visitors to your site and create more content that concerns those keywords, and see whether that improves site traffic. You can create multiple versions of a single e-mail campaign and see which gets the most click-throughs. Or reorganize your site to remove pages that are rarely visited, or create stronger links to those pages.

The key is to take a look at analytics at least once a month, plus after every major website change or e-mail campaign.

Link to your site from social networks

Be sure to complete all the information in your social network profiles, including URLs of your site and/or landing pages. Be sure to include links to your relevant website content on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and other appropriate networks.

Add yourself to online directories

Whether you are developing a new website, or you’re looking to improve your existing website, there are three basic aspects of your website you should examine: Usability, Content, and Design.

Usability

Always consider the experience of your site visitors when designing your website. Your site should be well organized and easy to use, allowing site visitors to quickly find the content for which they are looking.

• Make sure your top-level navigation is easy to locate and consistent throughout the site. It should be in the same place on every page.
• Avoid “battling” navigations. On your home page, do not include a navigation running across the top of the page and an additional navigation running down the side.
• Establish a site architecture that makes sense to your audience, without duplication of content.
• To help site visitors choose where to click, keep main navigation choices to a minimum of five or six, with only one or two special calls to action on the home page.
• Track what visitors to your site are doing. To analyze site traffic and to see what browsers visitors are using, set up Google Analytics on your site.

Content

Take the time to hone your messaging so home-page visitors can quickly determine who you are, what you do, and how you are different from your competitors.

• Keep content on each page to a minimum. Only include information that is engaging, interesting, and important to your customers.
• Make it easy to contact your organization, providing multiple options: e-mail, inquiry form, phone number, address, and a map to your location.
• Web copy should be clear, concise, and to the point. Bloated marketing “fluff” is only going to keep site visitors from understanding what you do.
• Keep search engine optimization (SEO) in mind by having an organized site where descriptive page titles correspond to headlines on the pages. Determine keywords your customers might use in an online search and use them on your site pages. Use Google Analytics to see which words they’re searching for online.
• Most importantly for SEO—produce remarkable content to which people want to link.

Design

Know your target audience and design a site that appeals to them. Your site should be visually memorable and stand out from your competition, but still be appropriate for your audience.

• Establish two or three primary colors to use on the site.
• Include images and graphics that support your messaging and help site visitors understand the content, but do not include images simply as filler. And keep the images small and optimized for the web.
• Use two web fonts—ones that everyone has installed—at the most.
• Avoid internal scroll bars within a page, frames, and tables.
• Include only one animation per page, including banner ads. And only include animation if it helps clarify your message.

The most important way to improve your site is to make sure that visitors can find you online, they can get the information they need once they get to your site, and that the design and structure appeal to them so they stay on your site.

This article was originally created for How To Santa Cruz, a feature of the 21st Annual Business Fair in Santa Cruz.