The Internet landscape has changed dramatically over the last couple of years. What has not changed is that internet use continues to increase. The following are some elements that your business should strongly consider in 2011.
Social Media: I know this has been written about before, but social media is a now factor in search engine rankings. Any company wanting to improve or maintain competitive search engine rankings will need to start some activity in social media. While social media is free, keeping up with it is time consuming. Many small businesses are finding it more affordable to contract out there social media efforts to qualified experts.
Social media is also important because of the vast numbers of people who are engaged in social media, 1/10th of the world’s population is on facebook. Only 5% of people on the internet are searching, the rest are surfing or engaging. Can your business really afford to ignore those numbers?
You Tube: This certainly falls under the category of social media, but it’s worth mentioning as a standalone item. You Tube videos can be a source of traffic, generate links to your site, and make your web site more engaging. All of these are good for search engine rankings. I recommend that you create your business You Tube channel and start creating short, but quality videos relating to your business. I also recommend that you have your videos optimized so that they are more likely to show up in search engines.
Customer Reviews: Google uses customer reviews in its algorithm for local rankings. Customer reviews on authoritative sites will greatly improve the trust factor of your business and website from Google’s perspective. Gaining trust for your site is no longer a matter of getting links pointing to your site. Google pays attention to mentions or citations and uses those for its local rankings and I suspect will someday use that for global ranking algorithms.
Claim Your Local Business Listing: The recent changes to how and when Google displays local searches makes it imperative that you at least claim your listing and do some minimal optimization, even if you are not a local business. I have several clients who are not local, but I can see a spike in traffic coming from their local listings.
SEO/Website Optimization: If you have not had any SEO done on your website by a qualified professional, you should strongly consider doing so. With millions of pages being added to the internet on a weekly basis, it is only going to get more difficult if you wait.
