Small businesses are not the only group who requires Search Engine Optimization. Even Fortune 500 companies need to spend time working on SEO. According to a 2009 survey conducted by Conductor, more than half of Fortune 500 companies had almost no natural search visibility, with their targeted keywords not within the top 100 natural search results. None of the Fortune 500 companies surveyed had a majority of their keywords ranking in the top 25 search results.

The following are some great ways to improve SEO and make your web site more effective. These practices are ethical, so they will not be greatly affected by Google’s algorithm changes.

1. Create content for people not the search engines
2. Make sure keywords are present in prominent places of your web site such as the headers, subheads, title tags and meta description snippets.
3. Structuring the web sites so that important keyword pages are high in the site architecture and easily found by search engines and people.
4. Create well-written engaging content is an integral way to attract quality links. Use social media sites such as Twitter to get links. Tweet a link to your web site or add it as your profile link. Twitter is crawled by search engines frequently, this will help your new web site to be discovered more quickly.
5. Don’t use link exchanges.  Instead offer testimonials to business vendors that you work with for links.

In a traditional market it is good to balance out your push/pull marketing. However in a market like the web, you want to have a much greater emphasis on pull marketing than push marketing. Here’s why. When someone gets on the computer, they choose where they are going to go. If they don’t want to go to your website, they aren’t going to go. Therefore, if you attempt push marketing on the majority of internet users, you’ll find that you will not much a response. An example is your website. If you put a website up online, and then market it using push tactics, not many people are going to go. They don’t want to be sold. They’d rather be on sites like Facebook, YouTube, or CNN. However if you make your site attractive, and give users a reason to go, you are using pull marketing, and you will see an increase in visitors to your site.

Although this defies some marketing convention, it actually makes a lot of sense. Think about it this way. A traditional medium is something like TV. Someone wants to watch their favorite show, but during that show, they are going to be served advertisements. They may not enjoy watching these ads, but they will do so to continue watching their show. This is push marketing. On a new medium like the web however, users choose what they see. Software exists to block advertisements, and people decide on whether they are going to click on them. In other words, most users don’t even need to look at ads to see the content they want. This is why a push marketing strategy will be largely unsuccessful on the web. The Internet is a democratic environment, so the users are going to decide what they see.

So how do you market to this new medium? Pull marketing. It is extremely effective on places like the web, mainly because of the ways the web works. Pull marketing on the Internet is highly related to Social Media and Viral Marketing. When using Social Media to market, you need to utilize the network so that users are attracted to what you are presenting. This is pull marketing in a nutshell. When using viral marketing, you need to create something that will attract users solely because it is something that will benefit them, instead of just advertising your brand.

Here are some ways that you can take advantage of pull marketing on the web:

• Perform extensive Search Engine Optimization on your website, so that when someone is using Google, your listing “pulls” them in.
• Use Google AdWords to serve ads to users that will pull them in.
• Create a new blog with useful content. Give users tips, news, opinions, ideas, etc. Use the blog to link back to your main site sparingly, but always focus on having the blog be beneficial to users.
• Commence a comprehensive Viral Marketing strategy. Come up with things that you can offer users that they will be attracted to due to the benefit they will receive. Then lightly brand the useful content, objects, etc before they are delivered to users.
• Utilize social media networks extensively. Post update about your business, or things you think may be useful on microblogging sites like Twitter. Create a page for your business on Social Media sites like Facebook.
• If you are a web related company, do something useful for the web community. Examples: release a free website template. Work on the development of an Open-Source project such as WordPress or Drupal. Provide industry insight.
• Offer something for free. Nothing sells, or pulls better, then the word free.

Now that you have some ways you can take advantage of Pull Marketing, get to it. There is a whole range of ways to get started. Not exactly sure how? Need some help? Want someone else to do it? Perhaps you should contact RP Design. (Or you can click on the banner to the right.)

The first step in developing a web site is coming up with a domain. Domain names are often compared to real estate in that domain names are foundations on which a website such as a house can be built. The highest quality domain names are similar to high demand real estate carry higher value, because of their online brand potential use in advertising and search engine optimization. A domain name uniquely identifies a website. Typing your domain name into your browser allows you to visit that site. When picking a domain, pick a domain that is memorable, your company name, shorter domain is better, get a .com or .net extension.Your domain is your company name with an extension such as .com or .net. For example, Google.com uses the company name Google and is easy to remember and short.

Here are common domain extensions:

.COM (Commercial) – Mostly intended for commercial use. It is the most recognized domain name extension.
.NET (Network) – This was originally intended for network oriented sites such as internet service providers. It is not the case any longer. People will register .NET domains for commercial use and if .COM is not available. In addition if they would like to protect their main .COM domain by registering another extension.
.ORG (Organization) – This domain extension was originally intended for non-profit or trade organizations and this is no longer the case.
.BIZ (Business) – This is registered to classify their website as a business. It’s a great to buy, if the .COM extension is not available

There are few things as frustrating as doing an Internet search for your own name and not being found. We had one customer who wanted to maintain their domain but let the domain time lapse. Worse the competitor purchased the domain and would not sell the domain unless $1,000 or more for the domain. The customer’s reputation, brand and the domain were taken. Just think of all the lost sales because the domain expired.The above video shows you how to register a domain just remember to renew your domain before it expires.