With more than 3.5 million active Internet users, New Zealand has the highest Internet usage density in the whole of Oceania-83.1 percent. The recent online retail report by ACNielson states that in the past 12 months more than 1.4 million New Zealanders have made a purchase online, an increase of 39 percent since 1997.
Therefore it is not surprising that New Zealand businesses are now allocating increasing percentages of their marketing budgets to online marketing efforts, such as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or Pay Per Click (PPC) schemes. Inbound marketing is now overtaking traditional outbound marketing methods, such as mail-outs, TV and radio in terms of their ROI. This is because with inbound marketing the customer is actually looking for a specific product or service, whereas outbound marketing can be likened to a 'scatter gun approach'--throwing a message out to the masses in the hope of reaching a target audience.
One of the main benefits of the new prevalence of inbound marketing is that SMEs now have the opportunity to compete with large businesses on a much more level footing and with a much smaller budget.
Richard Conway, managing director of Pure SEO (pureseo.co.nz), says his clients have seen huge benefits from a relatively small initial financial outlay.
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"We work closely with many website developers, offering them specialist SEO services for their clients. One such company we work with is Netactive (netactivexo.nz) one of Auckland's longest established website development companies.
"We worked on Warmup's website (warmup.co.nz) on behalf of Netactive, achieving top position on Google for the highly competitive term 'underfloor heating' within a couple of months.
"The impact has been phenomenal. Warmup was previously getting in the region of 50 visitors a day. Since gaining the top spot for this keyword they now get well over 100 visitors a day, some days over 150."
Obviously not all SMEs can afford to instruct a professional to implement on online marketing strategy. Conway points out a number of things any SME can implement to help increase its online presence.
Content is king
Search engines love content, the more content that you can add to your website the better. A good analogy for this is "fish and a fishing pole", says Conway. "When explaining why text heavy sites often outrank thin e-commerce sites, I like to call searchers fish and each word on the page an additional fishing pole in the water. The more text you have on a website the more searchers you are likely to'catch'."
It is important that the content added to your site is unique. A good idea is to add a frequently asked questions page which you can update regularly or, even better, add a blog which you post regularly.
The personal touch.
Customers often like personal opinions. Make your personal knowledge on your subject known; this will help you become an authority in the eyes of a searcher/potential customer (for example, through blogs or social media).
Local search
There are many ways to optimise for local search, one of which is to incorporate geographical terms in your on-page optimisation (i.e. city and country name on the copy within the website). The other thing that is quick and easy to do is register with Google Places, Yahoo/Bing Local and Finda-this allows people to find your business through the map searches.
Website speed
Google now incorporates a website's loading speed in its algorithm. There are lots of tools and tips available on the Internet to check and assist your website speed (including Google Webmaster Tools).
Analysis
Every website owner should have an analytics package installed. Google Analytics is free and easy to install and provides a huge amount of useful information such as number of visitors, search terms used and country of origin.
Pure SEO is based in Auckland but optimises websites both nationally and internationally. It is offering NZBusiness readers an exclusive discount of 20 percent on an SEO setup package. Call 09 950 3888 or 021242 9666 or email enquiries@pureseo.co.nz and quote 'NZBusiness'.
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