By Gregg Marshall, CPMR, CSP

Is your web site starting to look so last century? When was the last time you posted new content on your website?Does it have a date last updated on the bottom that says you have ignored it since 2007? Or longer?

Even if you aren’t Amazon.com or Zappos.com, your customers and potential customers are probably finding you more often by Googling you than looking you up in a phone book, if they still have phone books. Try looking your business up on Google, Bing, and/or Yahoo. Does it appear in the first page of results?

I wouldn’t get excited if you don’t appear on the first page, especially if you typed just your business name and it is relatively common. But if you type your business name, the city, and the state and you don’t show up, there may be search engine optimization (SEO) problems on your site. And another reason it may be time for a new web site.

SEO is a huge subject with many books written about it. And there are several multi-day conferences on SEO every year. Plus it is a moving target—the algorithms used by the search engines in ranking your site are always changing.
But one measure every search engine uses in its ranking is how recently your content has changed. Newer content is assumed to be more current and therefore more relevant.

Also, like women’s fashion, web site design is constantly changing. What was a reasonable web site design 5 years ago now looks dated compared to what other companies are doing. Like any advertising or brochures you might have, that first impression you give when visitors come to your web site is critical, especially since they might just click their back button and return to the search results page if you don’t capture their attention in just a few seconds.

Over the next couple of articles, I’ll cover more about building your new improved web site.

But in the meantime be thinking about what you want customers, or potential customers, to see in the first 10 to 20 seconds when they visit your web site. Usually if you haven't hooked them by then, you can figure they have hit the back button and are looking down their search results list for the next web site.
Then if you can keep them on your web site think of all the questions they might want answered about your company, your products or services, and how to buy and use them. One thought, since people buy from people, make sure that you profile anyone your customers might deal with. Our third generation web site, done back in 1998, had a page for each employee to share with their friends and family. Long before Facebook and social networking, it put a human side to our company that is still applicable now.

Gregg Marshall, CPMR, CSP, is a speaker, author and consultant. He can be reached by e-mail at gmarshall@repconnection.com, or visit his web site at http://www.repconnection.com.