A few days ago, on April 23^rd, I wrote a post called “Who Says Blogs Don’t Work?” I talked about how our CTO’s blog about conversions and salesforce.com garnered first-page placement in Google under the keywords salesforce conversions.

Actually, our blog was the last result on the first page. Well, today I looked, and it had moved up to #3 – yes, third place on the first page of results. Remarkable!  Indeed, blogs can be a cost-effective subsitute for expensive SEO.

On April 9th, Kevin Gilper, our CTO, published an article in our blog called “Conversions, Conversions, Conversions!” The article talks about the importance of tracking not only visitors to your site but conversions. The true measure of success for any marketing program, after all, is the number of new clients you acquire.

In the article Kevin also talks about our company’s expertise in integrating Salesforce.com. He briefly explains how we integrated Salesforce.com into the website of Advanced Snow and Ice Solutions so that when visitors enter callback information it is automatically recorded into a leads database that can be worked by their sales team. These leads are flagged to clearly indicate the time they arrived and that they are from the website. As sales people close sales, conversion reports are configured to show the ratio of number of visitors to number of sales conversions.

So why am I telling you about this post? Because a few days ago we discovered that if you search in Google for “salesforce conversions” Kevin’s blog entry appears on the first page of results. This is a home run for us because we are proactively seeking businesses that need Salesforce.com integration. So one, the blog establishes us as experts in the field; and two, it receives excellent search engine placement in Google for the exact keywords that we are targeting. A home run, indeed!

One of the best films about baseball fantasies is A Field of Dreams. How does it relate to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

“If you build it, they will come” is likely the most memorable of all the famous lines in the 1989 movie Field of Dreams starring Kevin Costner. If you’ve spent marketing funds to build a website but are waiting for customers to arrive you’ll understand why the title of this article is “Search Engine Optimization is NOT a Field of Dreams.” Building a website requires planning to address the online marketing objectives of the organization. If objectives have not been defined it is time to do so.

Many of the business owners of small and medium-size companies I’ve spoken with proudly point to their website. Some have wisely allocated marketing dollars with professional site developers to create their online presence but wonder why there are not hundreds or thousands of daily visitors. Others have enjoyed good traffic levels but have not generated much business. If Tiffany’s were to open up a jewelry store deep in the Pinelands of New Jersey or in a densely populated but economically depressed city would it be successful by Tiffany standards? No way!

The same is true of the online world. A site may be state of the art design, but if no one sees it or if those that do are not good prospects the investment is wasted. But in the online world there are tools available so that the owner of any website can attract qualified prospects and measure defined conversions with accuracy.

A fundamental tactic frequently overlooked by small businesses is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). There are thousands of self-proclaimed SEO experts, and there are also articles available from true SEO experts cautioning about do’s and don’ts when selecting your SEO vendor. It isn’t simply keywords and Meta tags. Sound SEO requires planning, attention to detail, and continuous follow up. A guarantee of top rankings should be an alert flag. Unlike the magic formula “If you build it, they will come,” there is no easy, one step SEO solution to get to the top of natural search results.

If you build it, they will NOT come unless the site gives them reason to do so. SEO is important because, if done effectively, marketing tactics such as paid search, Internet yellow pages, local networks, directory submissions and email can be minimized. The visitor WILL arrive because the search engines know the purpose of the site. The purpose of the site is driven by the online marketing objective. So when you plan a website or look to enhance an existing site, rely on trusted professionals for necessary assistance and do your homework. If a site is optimized they WILL come.