As a partner and project manager for Mandatek, I meet with a lot of companies and individuals who are looking to have us build a new website or revise an existing website. Most of the time, the clients are more focused on the design of the site rather than the site’s content. Unfortunately, if the client wants the site to be found, which I always assume to be the case, then emphasizing design over content is the wrong way to go. Now, Mandatek has a fantastic design team, and we can make a website look very nice. And before anyone starts arguing with me, I will admit that design is an integral component of a successful website. However, without meaningful content, no one is going to find that beautiful site.

Search Engines are Brainless, Content-Eating Bots

People forget that Search Engine bots aren’t really alive. They aren’t even really “engines”. Very simply put, they are just a clever set of algorithms that gobble words and spit them back out into categories. They’re blind and dumb and hungry for content. If your website has very little content, then, well, they are just going to move on to the next website that has more content to eat.

Search Engines Don’t See Design

Search engines can’t “see” very well. They don’t really see images (except the tags and file names associated with them) or Flash or JavaScript, so beautiful or cool designs appeal only to humans, not search engines. Awesome designs don’t help your site get indexed or found. Just look at Craigslist for an example of this concept.

Search Engines Like Fresh Content

Although hungry, search engines are actually picky about the content they eat. They don’t like old or expired content; rather, they look for the fresh stuff. A website needs to be updated on a regular basis with new content. Adding a blog, RSS feeds, events, articles, and links to other websites (both in and out) are all ways to add fresh content. And, of course, linking to social media accounts in sites such as Twitter, Facebook and the like are also vitally important. I advise clients to have their website built with a CMS (Content Management System) such as WordPress so that they can make periodic content changes fairly quickly and easily.

Don’t Feed the Bots

Design is important. But your website must contain keyword-rich, relevant, fresh content, and lots of it. Otherwise those brainless, hungry search engines bots will just go somewhere else.

-Michele Rempel, Mandatek

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If you have been sitting on the fence wondering if it’s a good idea to launch a Twitter account (or actually use the one you set up 8 months ago), or if it’s a good idea to start a blog or spend time building your profile and network on LinkedIn, maybe you need a gentle push. People in business often talk about ROI, return on investment, but now it’s time to start talking about ROV, return on visibility. For little money, but quite a bit of time, at least initially, you can garner real results by becoming visible to prospects in the online community.

Tackling the social media mountain can be daunting at first. Remember that you can start with baby steps. Actually, I would recommend taking some time to observe the social media landscape before jumping in. Then, once you’re ready, here are some suggestions to follow:

• Build your networks. Invite people you know to connect with you, and join groups in sites such as LinkedIn. Once you get to know people in those groups, you can invite them to connect with you as well. One thing to remember, though- numbers are great, but people have hearts. Closing business usually means have a face-to-face or voice-to-voice discussion with real people. Social media is a way for you to find each other, but you will still most likely need to interact with the person outside of the social media site to make a transaction, unless you’re just selling a well-known product.
• Join discussions and start discussions on your own. You don’t have to write you own blog—you can comment and respond or answer questions in LinkedIn, other blog posts, or on Twitter. Make your comments relative, beneficial and observe rules of etiquette.
• Start using Twitter. Twitter can increase your visibility dramatically. Find a platform such as TweetDeck to manage your Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook accounts from one place so you can save your sanity. Use a site like twellow.com to find people and businesses to follow, and they’ll usually return the favor. Make your tweets relevant and helpful, and remember to use them to let others know what your business can offer.
• Use like-minded communities to research your competition and see what others in your field are up to. On LinkedIn, for example, you can join relevant professional groups to ask questions and find out what’s going on in your industry. With this tool, you can also construct a quick poll and get responses from hundreds of people in a few hours.

As you get more involved, you’ll learn as you go about the different types of social media, how other small businesses use them, and approaches you can use to start your own online community, blog or video. So join in and start seeing a return on your visibility! Remember, social media is here to stay. Sure, it will morph over time (remember that texting has only been around for a few short years), but it’s not going away.

-Michele Rempel, Mandatek

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