Maximising search and content to increase your profile online

The online marketing landscape is changing rapidly. Search engines such as Google or Bing are now a primary route of information retrieval for business users across the construction industry, and for business owners they are a key route to generating new business and growth.

However, information overload can present additional challenges to businesses as they try to secure quality traffic to their website. We know that marketers in the construction industry invest more in their website than in any other marketing activity, but how do you ensure that you are driving relevant traffic to your website? Making sure that it's optimised and high ranking is key.

There are a number of opportunities you can take advantage of to increase your chances of achieving a good position in search engines and providing relevant information to your target market.

The importance of search: some facts and figures

Ensuring you have a good search engine marketing strategy is essential to ensuring the visibility of your brands when a user enters a search.

Search is now critical to information retrieval, in both the consumer and business markets. The Internet Advertising Bureau estimates UK internet users make at least 45 million searches every day, with over 1.4 billion search queries carried out in the UK in July 2007, with each session resulting in at least three clicks. Google remains the most popular search engine in the UK, with 76% of all searches. Users are now more sophisticated, commonly entering search terms of three words or more.

Overall, search engines are consistently cited as the number one method used by individuals to research a product or service. Put simply, search engines present a huge amount of data to the end user, and so search engines should be a key element in your marketing mix.

Search engine optimisation

What is it? How do you achieve it? Search engine optimisation simply means ensuring your website content is visible to the search engines and major search directories.

You can achieve a good search engine position in a number of ways, but one of the most reliable and accessible ways to do this is to publish regular, informative content on your website, about your brands, products and news. Content management systems or good web editors can help you achieve this. Ensuring your content is clear and concise and contains a balance of both marketing and technical content should result in specifiers searching on relevant search keywords and queries in Google being passed your way.

By careful choice of key words in your website copy, and management of your title and meta tags, you can increase the chances of your site ranking highly in the search engine results page when a user searches for them. Make sure your company name and key brand names are well placed on the page, including in headings, links and the page title. Also make sure that generic product names are also included, so that searchers who may not yet be familiar with your brand will also find you. Use Google Analytics to find out which keywords or phrases are delivering the most traffic to your website, and just as importantly, to find out which keywords are not generating any traffic. These are often just as important in helping you decide what content to put up onto the website.

Consider using paid-for advertising and PPC (pay-per-click)

When you launch a new product or service and are keen to create some quick visibility, using pay-per-click advertising systems such as Google AdWords or Yahoo Ad Sense can help establish your presence, launch your campaign and generate awareness of your brands. These systems are also great for testing out different marketing messages, landing pages and calls to action. They are also good at providing analytics on different keywords and estimating what level of traffic you might expect from certain key phrases.

Create and manage links with other websites

You should also consider creating a presence on other relevant high-traffic websites, where users will see your product and brand information. Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are increasingly being used by web-savvy businesses to keep customers and potential customers up to date with the latest company news. If you have videos of product demonstrations, for example, post them on YouTube for a potential audience of millions.

Industry-specific sites are also important; by listing your company and products on major construction-industry destinations such as ribaproductselector.com, you can be sure that specifiers will see your product information just when they need it.

Case study: Eurobond finds success on theNBS.com

At the forefront of composite panel design and manufacture for more than 25 years, Eurobond recently placed a specially-written sponsored article entitled Fire performance and the exterior building envelope on theNBS.com, highlighting critical fire safety considerations and how their products can help specifiers achieve the highest level of fire performance.

Widely known and respected throughout the industry as an authoritative source of construction guidance and technical information, theNBS.com is an ideal place to demonstrate to a core audience of construction professionals how your products can provide the solution they need. Eurobond's guest article not only featured on theNBS.com home page and in its themed editorial topic area, but will be promoted in the forthcoming NBS eNewsletter, sent to a highly targeted set of around 9,000 potential specifier customers.

Online marketing is a challenging and rapidly evolving landscape, but by placing your product information in front of users when they need it using online channels at RIBA Enterprises, you are putting your information right in front of a pre-qualified audience, at an optimum point in the selection and specification process.

Find out more

This is the first in a regular series of updates and features on digital and online marketing for the construction industry by Robert Easson, E Commerce Manager, RIBA Enterprises. If you have any feedback on this article or queries regarding online marketing at RIBA Enterprises or subjects you'd like us to cover as part of this series, then please get in touch:
Email: Robert.Easson@ribaenterprises.com
Follow: http://twitter.com/robeasson.

Back to top