Page 34 - MetalForming August 2010

Michael Bleau has served manufacturing and consumer- related industries since 1986. Prior to forming Industry Scope, a strategic b2b and b2c sales and marketing consultancy, in 2002, he held executive positions for several automation and press manufacturers. Michael regularly consults with manufacturing companies on strategic planning, sales and marketing, brand and product development, PR and sales-channel development. Industry Scope
tel. 810/397-1429
mbleau@industry-scope.com www.industry-scope.com
As with most communications proj- ects, planning and preparation should consume 80 percent of your time. The job you do before starting to code your website will have a consider- able impact on how well your site meets your audience’s expectations and the overall cost to produce your website. Here are the steps to take to ensure that your site attracts and retains the right kind of prospects for your business.
1) Secure a domain—While securing the domain is a simple task that can be tackled with a visit to a registrar such as NetworkSolutions.com or GoDaddy.com, deciding on the name can be a chal- lenge. Try keeping it simple, easy to spell, short and tied to your brand. Using your company’s name or a part of the name is the best approach, while avoiding cryptic acronyms. If needed, secure additional domains that may include common misspellings of your compa- ny’s name. Steer clear of buying com- petitors names as additional domains for redirects since, well it’s illegal.
2) Check out your competition— Visit your competitors’ sites to see how they stack up. You can right-click on their homepage and select “View Source” to see if they have positioned keywords for search engines. These usu- ally show up within the first 10 lines of code and look like, “<META NAME= “KEYWORDS” CONTENT=”apples, oranges...”. You also can see what com- petitors are spending on pay-per-click Adwords campaigns using sites like www.keywordspy.com. Knowing what your competition is doing can help you make better strategic decisions about how to position your site.
3) Identify your target audience— One of the most important steps in the
process is to know your prospects. Check out last month’s column, “Preci- sion: Pick your Targets” for more details. You need to quantify who your target customer is and understand what drives their strategy and business decisions. Define what is important to them, and what they would expect to gain from visiting your website. What is your value proposition—are you building the site to serve prospects, existing customers, current employees, prospective employ- ees or all of the above? Defining the value you bring for the audience and honing in on their interest will help you create a more relevant experience for visitors.
4) Outline what you intend to com- municate—Define what you want vis- itors to know about your company, cul- ture, quality, processes, products and services, and the impression you hope to make. Keep the statements short and to the point, without any fluff. Next, pri- oritize these points based on what will be of most importance to visitors.
5) Compile a keyword bank—Com- pile a listing of keywords based on what you learned from your competitive review in step 2, as well as from the outline you created in step 4. You can use this listing in several ways, identify as a reference for writing copy. Try to include as many keywords as possible throughout the sites’ copy. Next, include as many of your top keywords within a maximum limit of 255 characters and list these on your index page (see step 2). Use the remaining keywords in Google Adwords campaigns to drive traffic to your site. In such a program, you can never have too many keywords. MF
Part 2 appears next month.
THE BUSINESS OF METALFORMING MICHAEL BLEAU
B2B Websites in 10 Steps—Part 1
32 METALFORMING / AUGUST 2010
www.metalformingmagazine.com