Beefing up your online presence using SEO, Social Media, Analytics and Mobile Sites & Apps

Over the past 20 years, the internet has amassed almost 200 million websites. In that kind of environment, even an exciting, well-designed website is a drop in the ocean. To capitalise on all the opportunities the web offers, you need to get traffic to your site - and keep your visitors coming back. So how does that happen?

Search Engine Optimisation
SEO, or search engine optimisation, is an important part of the mix. It is likely that a large proportion of visitors to your site will arrive there via a search engine. This may be by directly searching for your business name, but could just as likely result from querying search terms such as your industry, location or product/service. SEO is all about ensuring that when somebody's searching for your type of business, yours is one of the very first to pop up in the search rankings.
This is achieved through a number of strategies, including optimising the way your pages are titled and tagged, adding dynamic content, and ensuring appropriate keywords feature within your content.

The growth of mobile
Increasingly, you have to think not only about how users are finding your site, but also how they're accessing the web. Use of mobile devices (smart phones, iPad, e-readers) for web access has exploded in the last 2 or 3 years. The growth of mobile is currently tracking at around 8 times that of the PC. By 2013, mobile phones are projected to overtake PCs as the most common method of web access.
Given this level of growth, it is increasingly important to consider your site's 'mobile friendliness'. It is not necessary for every business to have a mobile app, but it is worth considering how well your site's layout and content translate to the mobile realm.

Social media
Another route to online engagement is social media. Love it or hate it, the prevalence of social media is increasing all the time. It's not just about maintaining friendships or sharing the latest viral video - social media is increasingly relevant in the corporate arena. It gives you the opportunity to engage with your markets and connect with customers on a more personal level. When used well, it can help you build a community around your brand and drive traffic to your website. Social media is not necessarily an expensive exercise, but the potential returns can be significant.

Web analytics
Analytics can be an important piece of the puzzle. If you implement one (or all) of the strategies discussed above, how can you tell if it's working? Analytics won't provide definitive answers, but they can give you a good starting point. By measuring variables such as how many visitors arrive at your site, how they get there, how long they stay and what they click on, you can gain a good understanding of what areas of your site are popular and what needs more work.

So how do you get started with these initiatives?

• Do your homework


• Start an interaction


• Pick your position


• Engage an expert


• Advertising via social media


• Try, Refine, Try Again

Campbell Wilson is the General Manager at bwired, a web design services company based in Melbourne, Australia specializing in web design, development and internet marketing. bwired has also developed coreDNA, a enterprise CMS solution for website publishing and maagement.