There are three legs to getting found in today’s market:

• A clear brand message
• A Web site that’s differentiated from your competitors, and
• An online Web strategy that promotes search engine optimization.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the first leg of an effective online Web strategy, but SEO is a black box to most Web site owners. And guess what? We’re going to teach you just enough to make you dangerous because, frankly, you don’t need to know all of the ins and outs of optimization. You don’t want to know how sausage is made either.

Black hats and white hats
The rise of search is wonderfully chronicled in the book by the same name, The Search, by John Battelle, one of the original founders of Wired magazine. No one, except Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google, had any idea that getting found on the Internet would either be so important or so challenging to businesses. Yet search has become a multi-billion dollar business. And it is vitally important to your business.

But that’s enough on the history of search. Read the book. What we want you to know is how to get found. In the short history of search, individuals have tried to game the system in order to beat Google’s famous algorithm for delivering search results. One of the first tactics Google gamers used was hidden keywords embedded in the site (think “white on white”) to trick search engines into ranking the site higher. As these tactics proliferated, Google fought back by banning sites that employed these “black hat” techniques from search results altogether.

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Having an effective Web presence means so much more than just putting up a Web site. Professional services marketers can now choose from a mind-boggling collection of online tools to attract, inform and retain clients. Which ones should you choose to meet which objectives? How do you measure ROI?

On October 22, we set forth best practices, including the need to integrate online and offline efforts, in a 90 minute Webinar.

Topics included:

• How to develop a Web site that engages visitors
• Building a Web presence, not just a Web site
• Choosing among traffic building tactics

Download a copy of the PowerPoint slides, or view the Webinar in segments on YouTube.

year has passed since we last broached this subject and the situation hasn’t gotten a bit better. In fact, it’s much worse. Windows on the taller buildings on Wall Street are being nailed shut, and coal is beginning to look like a sensible and thoughtful holiday gift. So what do we do now? More of the same? In a way. Only more so.

In the words of Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, “…the business enterprise has two—and only two—basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are ‘costs.’”

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Recently, I went to a day-long seminar called wwww.dc to learn about business-to-consumer site design. There must be lessons, I imagined, we could learn about marketing to businesses that are born from consumer marketing. My hunch was confirmed. Here’s what I took away:

A Baseline Measure

The exponential growth of the Web is sobering. In 1997, there were only 100,000 sites. By 2006, over 100,000,000 sites were active, with three to four thousand going online each month. In other words, every 48 seconds a new site goes online. That dramatic explosion has changed the way consumer product and service companies approach their sites.

Build Community (Maybe)

The buzz from nearly every speaker was about building an online community on their sites. In particular, we learned washingtonpost.com creates and sustains a community by:

• Creating live online forums that bring readers of The Washington Post into active, daily contact with the site
• Updating blogs at least once a day
• Being considerate of others by using software filters to shut down offensive language
• Sending out reporters with digital cameras to augment their stories with images that create a more intimate relationship between the reporter or writer and the subject.

What’s the lesson for you?
The only “community” that’s likely to be built on a professional service site is around a blog that keeps visitors up-to-date with changes in narrowly focused fields. In those fields, live, online forums can be winners. But aim for monthly updates, not daily. And, of course, those forums must be advertised online, via email and through traditional channels.

Take another tip from washingtonpost.com and use that digital camera you bought last year. Professional photographers are not required for every assignment. The Internet has become very forgiving of non-professional photography (Thank you, YouTube). And “non-professional” cameras are delivering better and better images.

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