There’s a dark cloud looming on the horizon. It’s gathering in energy and getting bigger as we speak. It’s as destructive as a tornado and just as indiscriminate. What I’m talking about is the next G-Slap; be ready for big changes from the monster of search engines around the first of the year. They’ve already been tinkering with the algorithms and are definitely trending away from current PR and content rich based results. Early next year, though you may have noticed it already if you’re sharp enough, the big G will display rankings based on the intent of the searcher. This means that your content will be less relevant if you’re not:

1. Geo-targeting (G is doing this already based on users IP whether the user is signed in or not)
2. Relevance - generically speaking, if a room full of searchers were to type java into the query box, some would be looking for software, some would be looking for drinks and yet others would be looking for travel sites.
3. Using video on your site
4. Preparing for the changes NOW.

Getting prepared for the next ominous  G-slap is an adventure in speculation. One line of thought says that if you concentrate your marketing on single keywords you may want to offer content for the other possible synonymous uses of your keywords. It means a shift in methodology, but for the studious and adaptive marketers out there that can make the necessary changes and move ahead of the trend it can be the difference between having top ranking for you kw’s today and being off the chart completely overnight or keeping your top listings by adapting and overcoming. The proliferation of “scraper sites” and “spam sites” that steal the top rankings by virtually scraping the content from its competitors and republishing it, most times without proper credit to the original authors, has prompted the change. They have managed to skew the results based on current trends at G and the other major search engines. When you think about it, this change will mean even more success for the marketer that is savvy enough to ride the wave. It’s kind of like the analogy for marketing to baby-boomers; the bowling ball in the garden hose. Baby-boomers make up the vast majority of the demographic of buyers that Internet Marketers target. When those boomers pick up on a new trend it’s like a bowling ball in a garden hose, thus the .com millionaire boom of the 90’s. Get in at the upswing of the trend and you’ll ride a very profitable and somewhat predictable course. Transfer that thought over to this looming change and you can see how the change SHOULD actually bring even MORE targeted traffic, intent on BUYING your products. Wouldn’t you rather have the searcher that was looking for your new java software product be the first at your site? This change will ultimately alter the way that Internet Marketers promote products. The question is whether or not we should do anything at all. This new way of presenting search results only make a difference by weeding out those less targeted results for a particular searcher based on their search and usage histories. I think it will be a win/win/win situation.

Setting up a website is the very first step of an Internet marketing campaign, and the success or failure of your site depends greatly on how specifically you have defined your website goals. If you don’t know what you want your site to accomplish, it will most likely fail to accomplish anything. Without goals to guide you in developing and monitoring your website, all your site will be is an online announcement that you are in business.

If you expect your site to stimulate some form of action, whether it is visitors filling out a form so a representative can contact them, or purchasing a product, there are steps you can take to insure that your website is functioning at peak efficiency. One of the first indicators of how well your site is working for you is finding out the number of visitors in a given period of time. A good baseline measurement is a month in which you haven’t been doing any unusual offline promotional activities.

However, just because hoards of people have passed through your gates does not mean your site is successful. Usually, you want those visitors to actually do something there. It is equally important to monitor the number of visitors to your site who made a purchase. This figure is called the site conversion rate, and it is an essential element of the efficacy of your website.

To find the site conversion rate, take the number of visitors per month and figure out the percentage of them that actually performed the action your site is set up for. For example, if you had 2,000 hits to your site, but only 25 of them purchased your product, your site conversion rate equals 1.25%. To get this figure, take your number of visitors and divide that figure by the number of visitors who made a purchase. Then divide that result by 100 (25 ?00 X 100).

If your website is set-up to get visitors to fill out a form, make sure to then figure out what the difference is between your site conversion rate and your sales conversion rate. This is because not everyone who fills out your form will actually become your customer. However, whether your site is set-up to sell a service or product, or to get the visitor to fill out a form, the site conversion rate will measure the success or failure of your website whenever you make changes to the site.

You may find that you need to implement some additional marketing strategies if you find that traffic to your site is extremely low. There are several effective methods to improve the flow of traffic to your website, particularly launching a search engine optimization campaign. This campaign is targeted at increasing your position in search engine results so that consumers can find your pages faster and easier. You can either research the steps you need to take to improve your search engine rankings, or employ a search engine optimization company to do the work for you. In either case, after your have improved your search engine positions, make sure you keep on top of them by regular monitoring and adjusting of your efforts to maintain high positions.

Another factor to examine is how easy it is for a visitor to your website to accomplish the action the site is set-up for. For example, if your goal is for the visitor to fill out a form, is this form easily accessible, or does the visitor have to go through four levels to get to it? If it’s too difficult to get to, the customer may just throw in the towel and move on to another site. Make sure your buttons are highly visible, and the path to your form or ordering page quickly accessible.

Finally, have a professional evaluate the copy on your website. The goal is, of course, to get your visitor to make a purchase or fill out your form. Website copy must be specifically geared to your online campaign and not just a cut and paste job from your company brochure. The right copy can make the difference between profit and loss in your online campaign.