We are in the process of rebuilding the GILL Media website. But this rebuild unlike the one 2 years prior (yes I said 2 years) has a completely new approach. Our new website puts our Blog front and centre.
I believe that websites of the future will be more and more about providing quality information and building a relationship with prospects. If you compare this to a typical website of today, we look at static brochures where businesses invested in their site and sat back waiting for the rewards to come pounding in.
When that didn’t happen (build it and they will come rarely does) then they came looking for a company like ours to provide SEO (search engine optimization) so they could be found on the front pages of the major search engines.
There are three main reasons why this approach of forcing search engine optimization will soon not work.
- Competition is increasing by leaps and bounds.
- Fresh content is being created by your competitors constantly – search engines like active sites
- Social Media is adding a facet to the authority mix
So let’s look at these individually;
Increasing Competition
When looking to achieve first page ranking with the search engines, there are several components we need to look at such as; number of indexed pages (how big the site is, and a blog with active content contribution grows your site), age of the domain, number of inbound links, quality of links, number of competitors (sites indexed for a particular keyword), and site page authority.
As more businesses understand the importance of the web to their future, they are getting busy investing in this area. For every day that passes when your business is doing nothing online, your competition for the keywords you want significantly increases .
Consistent Quality Content Creation
With over 100 million blogs tracked on the internet (according to BlogPulse) it’s easy to understand why there is so much information being created daily. Add in articles, press releases, and websites with no blogs and the amount of information is staggering. But buying is emotional, not logical. Although we may validate it with logic, it’s emotion that pulls the credit card out. So if there is 100,000 competitors vying for the same business, what will make you stand out. Your voice! This is the relationship element of a blog and consistent quality content. Your opportunities to communicate, engage, and nurture prospects into your business. Let’s face it, if you’re in sales (and we all are) than some people will like you, some won’t. But if they never get to meet you, they won’t take the chance. This is so critical I could go on and on but hence we move forward..
The Social Mix
This is what I feel is the secret weapon and so many business I talk with, still don’t truly understand its power. Every day it seems the search engines are taking more and more notice of social media traffic and taking into consideration its weight on site authority. However, even if this is not the case, the ability to reach out and communicate with thousands of potential prospects from your seat is just too huge to ignore. If Social Media benefits your business (as I know it does) lets even call that a bonus.
Before we rebuilt our site to counter these three challenges facing all of us, we knew there was some critical points to consider in the new design. Our new website (to be launched in February) needed to be able to easily adopt this new social strategy as well as be easily optimized. After a great deal of research and comparison, we found the first two components with the following:
- A good CMS (Content Management System) – We recommend WordPress as an awesome choice.
- A Search Engine Optimization friendly theme – We have adopted for the new GILL Media site the Genesis Theme (affiliate link)
Most people have heard of WordPress, and frankly nothing compares. But why Genesis? Genesis is a premium customizable framework that rides in WordPress, controlling the theme that is critical to having a highly optimized website. Genesis gives an added bonus to most frameworks available, in that it offers multiple premium themes to choose from. The themes make it extremely inexpensive to have a website up and built for minimal cost. Basic customization is fairly easy and advanced customization is fully supported by many programmers including our programming team.
Let us know below in the comments, if your business has also made the change or is considering changing from a more brochure based site, to that of a socially engaged marketing engine. Don’t forget to subscribe to our blog as we walk through the site changes over the next few months outlining each stage of our redesign.
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