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One of the most important aspects to any business is marketing. But with the ever increasing impact of the Internet on just about everything we do in life, the rules for successful marketing are changing fast and this can have a dramatic impact on business.

As a Management Consulting firm we feel this particular area deserves our attention, since it affects us as a company, so too it affects our clients.

With the fall of economic activity, market visibility and competitiveness become very important. Current trends show that people [customers] now almost exclusively look for products and services online and particularly via Google; less so via Yahoo, Bing as well as other search engines. Long gone are the days when businesses placed their ads in the local Yellow Pages and waited for customers to call… No matter what product or service you sell, you must be found online.

However, having a nice website for people to find you is as naive and useless as not having any web presence at all. The reason is your site must be designed correctly so as to be seen and ranked high enough by the myriads of search engines in virtual space; but most significantly, by the king of them all: Google.

Google keeps improving itself to ensure the search results are ever more accurate and relevant to users. People do not go through page after page of search results. Current statistics show that 42% of the search traffic goes to the top natural search result and the rest is distributed among those in the first page. Therefore in order to be “found” your product and services and/or your business must appear on the front page of Google. With millions of competing sites, this is no small task… and the trend is for more sites to continue to be created and jump in to the online ocean .

That’s where SEO comes in. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is an art-form as well as a science to make your site more visible and ranked higher than those of your competitors for the specific search terms related to your products and services.

On average businesses spend from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand regularly (on a monthly basis) to ensure their sites rank in the top 3 positions for their chosen search terms. The key aspect is first to find out what search terms or search phrases are the ones that convert into paying customers – you want relevant traffic that buys your products or services. To get an idea of how many people are searching for a relevant keyword, there’s a free Google tool called Keyword Tool. Click on the link and type in the keyword you think people would use to search for your product or service online. Immediately you’ll be able to see different keyword combinations and the global and local monthly search results – that means, how many people are looking for your products globally or in your area each month.

The next thing is to ensure your site is optimized for those terms… and when you thought you had it made, Google changed the rules again and introduced “Places”. Places results now go on top of natural search results. “Places” takes into consideration your locality as well as other factors Google considers “relevant” to a person’s online search.

The good news is that if your site is properly set up for “Places”, you can be on the front page of Google within a day; whereas conventional SEO can take several months and must be maintained periodically. Our view is a business needs both “Places” as well as natural search optimization. Recently released stats show that only 3% of businesses are optimized for Places in Google.

Unfortunately it is quite complicated and time consuming to attempt to do it all on your own, unless you happen to be well versed in SEO.

After having engaged consultants ourselves and having been brought up to speed with the complexities of the brave new world of internet presence and marketing, we’ve decided to invest more resources in this crucial area of business consulting.

We’ll be making an announcement shortly… basically we’re trying to remove the mystery, reduce the cost and simplify the process to benefit our clients. As always, we’re always trying to be at the forefront of Management Consulting services.

Stay tuned!