Is Your Company Practicing SEO?

What’s the first thing a print buyer does when considering a new print supplier today? The answer, of course, is to Google them. Obviously, being listed on online search engines is directly related to the amount of traffic your website generates. The higher your website ranks on a search engine, the greater the chances a potential lead will click through to view your content. As you are probably aware, search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN use algorithms that web crawlers use to rank pages, and savvy printers know how to take advantage of the system.

Yet our research at Print Buyers Online.com has shown that printers are lagging behind in such marketing efforts. In January, we asked our print supplier members, “What efforts does your company take to ensure search engine optimization (SEO) for your website?” Surprisingly, only 50% of our members are taking strides in this area. Forty percent said they were planning to incorporate SEO into their future strategies and 10% said they were not interested in this process.

This is in stark contrast to an October 2008 study conducted by the Aberdeen Group, which found that 71% of all industries are now implementing formal search engine marketing initiatives. Yet our data demonstrates that many printers are not taking the initiative to ensure the highest online visibility for their organizations.

To learn how your company can get in the game and be found more easily by print buyers, see Suzanne Morgan’s upcoming article entitled “Best Practices in Search Engine Optimization” in the March edition of Printing Impressions magazine.

If you are practicing SEO, beyond creating descriptive Meta tags and URLs, what efforts are you taking to ensure search engine optimization for your company’s online presence?