Pull Marketing for Healthy Website by Savvy Medical Company (Part I)
Posted by dan ronken on Wed, Jul 22, 2009
It turns out the number thirteen is not always an unlucky number. Just to be on the safe side, I'll split this post into two. Part one will certainly give you enough food for thought if you have even the slightest desire for your website to be in overall better health.
Andrew Rodgers sure knows how to give a good 'check up' and he was gracious enough to share the following ideas that helped put his company, Elekta Medical on the map, and always a step ahead of their competitors.
1. Cleanse Site of Duplicate Content
The more pages your company has indexed in search engines, the higher your potential rank. This is why search engines frown upon duplicate content. Search engines view a website with duplicate pages as spread too thin and lacking depth. Not to mention the fact that they may actually penalize you for having duplicate pages.
2. Monitored Inbound Links and Proactively Sought More Authority.
Inbound links from authoritive websites are the one of the most important factors as viewed by search engines to give your website the highest ranking in natural search results. For example, if you're a home builder / contractor (yes, I'm hoping the free fall has finally stopped as well) and Home Depot provides a link to your site, it bodes well for your company when someone types in one of the keywords you are attempting to optimize into a search engine.
3. Put the Brakes on PPC & Ad Words Campaigns
Pay Per Click & Ad Words campaigns can certainly drive more traffic to your site, but by properly designing landing pages, you can convert more leads to sales without the added expense. You may want to re-evaluate your original expensive strategy to see if it is really paying off. You can achieve the same (if not better) results simply by optimizing your site.
4. Started Blogging 3-4 Times per Week
Do you think that blogging generates business? Not only does it generate business, but blogging also proves that you are on top of the current trends in your industry and are aware of the needs of your customers. Lastly, blogging provides your company with a platform to take charge of your reputation in the marketplace.
5. Allow People to Subscribe via RSS
RSS feeds (Really Simple Syndication) provide yet another way for your current and future customers to receive your new posts. It's best to give your readers a choice on how they would like to to receive your content.
6. Communicated with Customers on Twitter and Linked to News Articles.
I know. I know. Twitter this and Twitter that. Regardless of how you feel about this medium, it's surely effective for real time communication and an broadening your reach. Most importantly, there are simple tools you can use to measure your ROC (Return on Content) to gauge the value of your time spent in the Twittersphere.
7. Fixed and/or Updated Profiles in Many Directories
Are you listed in many directories? DMOZ and Zoominfo are a couple of free directories that would be worth your while to get your company listed. Beware of wasting your time attempting to get listed on as many directories you can find because the ROI (Return on Investment) of your time will not be worth it.
You don't need to be a large organization with 2500+ employees such as Elekta to take advantage of strategies such as these as long as you understand the difference between a push vs. pull internet marketing strategy. The ideas mentioned above work perfectly for the small to medium sized business owner as well.
Elekta dramatically improved the health of their website and implemented these best practices that are the 'apple a day' which keeps the search engines coming their way.
What is your opinion? Please leave a comment and share your thoughts. Subscribe via email or RSS feed and you'll also be in the loop for part two coming up next!