Much has been said about online marketing and the related value to a business. Most businesses will loudly profess their frustration with the poor results. Hours are spent on social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIN or Twitter trying to find that one magic viral post that will open the online marketing doors. Sadly many will give up and throw in the towel and join the online marketing nay-sayers.

The real problem is not that online marketing does not work or cannot produce desired results but rather the huge lack of understanding. Businesses tend to focus on one or two areas like content and email marketing or content and social media marketing. Online marketing must be viewed as a marketing method with many components interlinked and dependent on the success of each other. But, most importantly, online marketing has a beginning, a starting point, a foundation and this will determine the success of your entire online marketing initiative.

So where do you start? The Business Website!

And this is where it all goes wrong. Nothing not your content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing or any of the other online marketing components will produce the results you are aiming for unless your website is fully functional and optimized. Most businesses treat their websites only as an online brochure providing product and service information with some articles published irregularly and then expect huge online results. After all the investment probably was huge also!

[Tweet “The business #website is in fact a hidden resource that should be fully utilized “]

The business website is in fact a hidden resource that should be fully utilized; similar to that of a robotic marketer or a robotic sales person or a robotic customer service representative. It is not enough to have your business website well designed, well developed and hosted on the best hosting platform, just to be ticked off as completed in your online marketing project plan.  A website that has not been search engine optimized daily and kept in tip top shape is of absolute no value to the business. In fact if a website is fully developed, optimized and maintained all other online marketing components will play the role they should – distribution or could even be excluded! Think about that for a minute and consider these statistics:

• 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine
• Google owns 65-70% of the search engine market share
• 70% of the links search users click on are organic
• 70-80% of users ignore the paid ads, focusing on the organic results
• Search is the #1 driver of traffic to content sites, beating social media by more than 300%
• SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads (such as direct mail or print advertising) have a 1.7% close rate
• For Google, 18% of organic clicks go to the #1 position, 10% of organic clicks go to the #2 position and 7% of organic clicks go to the #3 position

It just makes sense to spend more time on your website and ensure that it is fully search engine optimized. You will see a huge reduction in online marketing cost as well as time.

Search engine optimization is normally ignored or not considered due to the view that it is technically complex and expensive. Take advantage of this information and decide to fully utilize this very powerful hidden resource to grow your business.

Talk to us we can assist in developing your website or optimizing your existing  website at very affordable prices.