Ebizbraintrust.com

Regardless of what your business does, what services you provide or what you want to sell through E-commerce, all business web sites have at least one common need: They all need to attract visitors in order to succeed.

Obviously, volumes upon volumes of information have been produced on various tips, tricks and tactics for building both search engine rankings and site traffic. Often overlooked in the middle of that huge data dump, however, are three simple things you can do to help build your site’s search recognition and drive more visitors to your site.

(A caveat: Don’t conflate ’simple’ with ‘easy’. Nothing below requires any sort of specialized technical knowledge, but they all require a bit of elbow grease on your part. Remember one of my main themes: For online business, there’s no such thing as an Easy Button.)

1. Links from directories. Most search engines place a fairly high value on links from directory sites, primarily because directories are generally edited and maintained by real, live humans. As a result, the categories and summary information concerning directory-listed sites are generally accurate and considered high-quality data.

Directory links, however, are frequently overlooked as a valuable component in search engine strategies - even by professional site developers. In a way, I suppose, that’s understandable. Generating directory listings can require either patience or money - sometimes both.

Submissions to directories like DMOZ.org are free, but they can take time because the directory listings are reviewed by volunteer editors who maintain the integrity of the category listings. Other popular directories like Yahoo! Directory and Business.com are paid directories, typically with an annual fee to maintain inclusion in the listings.

Are paid directories worth the expense? In moderation, probably. Some of the directories cater to specialized interests, which may be valuable to you if it’s a market your business targets. The better-known general directories are high page-ranks sites with heavy saturation in the search engines - both of which are elements that can help boost your site’s search score.

Directories are too numerous for me to list here, but a good place to start researching them can be found at Strongestlinks.com.

2. Online press releases. There are a number of sites that specialize in publishing press releases in various ‘feed’ formats. When you first take a close look at the process, it might not make much sense. How many people scroll through all of the posts on a press release site, looking for information about shopping sites or local businesses?

Fortunately, that’s not how they work. By publishing their press releases in easy-to-use web formats, these services help feed the press releases you write into the search engines. Some of them are picked up by so-called ‘content aggregators’, but the real point is to get press releases about their clients - you, in this case - stuffed into the search engines where they can be found.

You can find a number of press release ‘tutorials’ if you take the trouble to look. In a nutshell, in order to have maximum impact, your press releases need to be packed with text that uses the keyword phrases your potential customers will be searching for. And don’t forget to include links back to your website and your business’ contact information in each release.

3. The ‘blogsosphere’. This tip assumes that you have a blog somewhere on your web site. (You DO have a blog hosted on your domain, don’t you?) Your web site’s blog is just the starting point, though. A broader participation in the ‘blogosphere’ is what will start to boost your search rankings and bring more traffic to your site.

This involves finding other blogs that may reach your target market and actively partcipating on them by posting relevant comments, joining into discussions and linking to interesting posts on your own blog. This helps other bloggers - and other blog readers - find your blog (and the rest of your business web site that accompanies it). If you’re clever enough, or simply diligent enough, your blog can be a great tool for attracting qualified visitors to your web site.

When you walk into a place of business, how much do you value appearance and presentation? Appearance isn’t everything, of course, but you’d probably have some second thoughts if the receptionist was sitting at a collapsible picnic table in a room furnished with folding lawn chairs. The public face that a business presents goes a long way toward building the first elements of consumer trust.

Business web sites aren’t any different. They need to have “furniture” too. Unfortunately, in all of the rush and fuss associated with getting a new E-commerce site off the ground, much of the proper site furniture sometimes can be overlooked - or at least left until the last moment and then thrown onto the site hastily and without much thought.

Here’s a short checklist of important bits of furniture that every site needs to include:

1. Contact information. Your site should share your business contact information in as many places as possible. In order to avoid spam, email contact should be limited to a programmed contact form - but your business’ phone and address info should appear somewhere on every page of the site.

Obviously, people can’t do business with you if they can’t contact you. It baffles me that many businesses want to restrict contact information to an email contact form and nothing more. Their main fear is that publishing their phone number on the Internet somehow invites more abuse than publishing the same number in the phone book.

Why on Earth would you want to hide contact info from people who want to do business with you? Your business web site isn’t a super-hero and you don’t need a secret identity. Openess with your website customers helps breed the trust that’s so critical to online business.

2. Detailed “About Us”. This element works closely with the prominent display of your contact information. Customers want to know why they should do business with you - how will you solve their problems? - and this is where you tell them. Remember that your web site is available even when you’re not, so the information you give to your site visitors needs to present your business’ best ‘face’.

3. Clear data privacy policy. Give your site’s data-handling policy a prominent display in the site navigation (don’t hide some tiny link in the footer) and explain clearly to your customers what you do with their contact information. If your site generates lead for third-party clients, tell your site visitors. If you will only be using their contact information for your own business, tell them that too. Most importantly, whatever policies you state - make certain that you strictly abide by them.

4. Prominent terms of use and refund policies. This applies primarily to E-commerce sites. Be up-front with your potential customers about how you expect to do business with them and what they can expect from you when there is a problem with their order. Site visitors are aware that you likely aren’t perfect - but they also like to know that you’re prepared to deal with the imperfections when they occur.

If your business has been avoiding E-commerce because you think your target market doesn’t buy things online, you may be making an expensive mistake.

According to the report Generations Online released earlier this year by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, an amazing 71 percent of all online adults use the Internet to make purchases.

Even more interesting, older Americans are turning to the Internet in greater numbers than ever - and a large number of them are now using the Internet to research products and make purchases. Over the past few years the greatest growth (by percentage) in online users was for the age 70-74 group. In 2005, just 26 percent of this age group used the Internet. By 2008 (the survey’s end date), 45 percent of Americans age 70-74 were online.

For detailed survey results, you can check out the resources available at the links I gave above. But it’s also worth noting not just how many people are online, but what they’re doing once they get connected.

There is plenty of good news in the report for E-commerce providers. According to the survey, 71 percent of online adults used the Internet to make a purchase. While it’s no surprise that purchasing activity is dominated by the age groups between 18 - 44, ‘Boomers’ and older Americans are no strangers to shopping online.

68 percent of younger Boomers (age 45-54) bought something online in 2008, as did 72 percent of older Boomers (age 55-63). Also note that the purchasing trend is fairly strong for the 64-and-older groups - around half of the Internet users in those age groups report buying something online.

Now, note that the report concerns percentages of the various demographic groups that use the Internet - and not the percentage of that groups total population. It’s an important distinction, of course, because not everyone uses the Internet - especially among members of the older age groups. But the bright side to that - pointed out in the first part of the Pew study - is that the strongest growth in Internet use over the past three years has been among older Americans.