"We are up all night"

I saw this line as part of an ad on a billboard yesterday and I thought it tied in nicely to what I was going to comment on today. Why do we do what we do?  Why create web site(s) and market them?

After seeing that billboard it got me thinking. Yes billboards can be a good form of advertising but are very limited. You cannot easily change the sign, you can’t make folks drive by the sign, or even read the sign. The Internet is another story. You can easily change or update your web site or content, you can help drive folks to your web site, and it is up all day, all night, 365 days a year. (unless of course you forget to pay your bills 🙂 )

I bring this up because of an article I read a while back: Search Engine Optimization Means Business By C.C. Holland.

This is an excellent article on how a small business can grow and thrive on-line with a little bit of effort. The author talks about how one law firm was able to turn its business around using search marketing.  (There is some nice introductory SEM information included too.)  They said:

“The research paid off. Parra took the firm’s “really bad site” and tore it apart, improving the design and completely reworking the navigation. Most importantly, she created a huge amount of content and fine-tuned the site using guidelines and techniques approved by the major search engines.

The end result?  Jackpot. “When I finally launched the fully optimized site, it only took seven days to hit the top of Google,” she says. And the clients began to pour back in. That was two years ago; today, Number1 DUIoffice.com is still the first result returned in Google for the keywords “Oakland DUI lawyer.” And all the firm’s eggs are firmly in the online basket, says Parra: “We’re entirely Web-based, and we don’t do any other advertising.”

This is why we do what we do. This is why I am writing to the small business owner, to help educate on search marketing. ‘ Having a properly created, optimized, and promoted web site works!