Any good ad man can tell you that ‘image is everything’ when it comes to branding products. That’s especially important when it comes to highly competitive niches where different products of similar quality are vying for sales. In the online world, however, image is only half the battle.
It’s crucial when you’re engaging in online marketing that you give every aspect of sales equal weight. If you’ve been dazzled by traffic generation software and neglected the image presented on your website, you may get traffic, but will they buy?
There’s a flipside to that. If you have been so focused on getting your website to look perfect and reflect your company image, you may have overlooked SEO. Your image creation is useless without traffic to see it.
Let’s take a hypothetical example of cosmetics. Cosmetics sales are largely image-driven. The best eye cream looks exactly like any other eye cream unless it is presented properly. Your first job is to be sure that your website design, graphic design and content are professionally done. A cheap-looking presentation makes your products look cheap, too.
It doesn’t stop there, though. Of course, your cosmetics site will be selling more than eye cream. Let’s say one of your products is a particular brand of eau de parfum spray. You already have a website design that shows you are selling quality makeup and perfumes, so that’s done. Now you need to get people to find it. In the case of that perfume spray, you’ve got to remember that people will be looking for all kinds of perfume. Use relevant keywords like ‘perfume’ and ‘eau de cologne, ‘ not just specifically ‘eau de parfum.’
The proper use of keywords can’t be emphasized too much. Even if you are selling a specific brand of product, you want to people who are looking for the generic product or you will limit your market to a handful. You may be selling a Delonghi space heater, but not too many people will be searching for that brand name specifically. Your primary keywords must be very general - ’space heater, ‘ ‘heater’ and the plural versions of those words should probably be your primary keywords. After that, you will look at secondary keywords.
The Delonghi brand is synonymous with quality, so when you present the heater on your website, it must also reflect that level of quality. The rules mentioned above apply to heaters as much as they apply to cosmetics!
Marketing and advertising online require both SEO and good design. If you broaden your scope and use this two-pronged attack, you will achieve far better results.