Client Q & A – Organic Visibility
March 8th, 2010. Posted by Greg Randall
I had a client contact me today to make comments on the Zarbo website. I wasn’t going to spend time breaking it down, but I did immediately noticed the URL strings. I said, Zarbo would always struggle to gain organic prominence in the search engines because of the technology that was powering it. Two hours later, my client sent me a Zarbo case study and told me I was wrong. The key statement in the case study read:
“People go to Google searching for gift baskets and Zarbo does come up (on the first page of hits at Google New Zealand). Or if you look for “Liquid Glucose” on Google, Zarbo comes at the top of the list for that.”
My reply:
Have you tried to type “liquid glucose” into Google for NZ results? I made sure “Liquid Glucose” was still available on the website, it was, when you type this term into Google (NZ results), Zarbo is no where to be seen. What’s funnier is, when you type “zarbo liquid glucose” into Google, the case study article ranks higher than the Zarbo website. Zarbo does not rank anywhere near the first page for the term “gift baskets”. Either this article is extremely old or someone is not telling the truth.
For a website business to grow online it must be visible in Google for “unbranded” terms i.e. “gift baskets”. If someone knows Zarbo and wants to purchase from them again, they will bookmark the website or type “zarbo” into the Google search bar. That’s repeat business and is a good thing. However, it is not growth. Put simply, Zarbro needs to be visible for terms like “gift baskets” if it wants to grow.
Having an acquisition focus early in an online businesses life cycle is natural; however don’t be overtly fixated on this. It is hard to acquire customers but just as hard (and some say harder) to keep them. Customer Retention strategy is a great topic to cover for another day, but suffice it to say, a balance is necessary for the success of all online businesses. Why is it harder? One reason is, Retention strategy includes customer experience/service. Something many online businesses get very wrong.
If you are looking to develop either an acquisition or customer retention strategy, the team at Exceed Online can help. If you know of an online business which is doing a great job of acquiring and retaining customers, let me know.