As the economy shrank again in the last three months, it was found last week, that Britain is on course for its third recession in four years. Undeniably recessions can severely affect the performance of firms and even their survival. However not all firms are equally affected by the recession. Srinivasan, Rangaswamy and Lilien (2005) state that there are of course businesses which choose to cut back and wait for the recession to pass. However it is important to acknowledge other firms choose to view recessions as opportunities to strengthen their businesses, invest aggressively and establish their advantage over their competitors. For example Camel cigarettes and Chevrolet, seized top market positions from their competitors through aggressive marketing campaigns during the Great Depression in the 1930s. More recently it was observed that a similar approach was adopted by BMW, Cisco, Dell and Wal-Mart. “The belief at the company is that you don’t save your way through a recession” Joseph Milner, President of Intel Capital (2003).
Of course not all businesses have the marketing budget of BMW and Dell. However rather than cutting back it is important to become more strategic about your marketing budget. For those businesses which are predominantly online or who have the capabilities of selling their goods or services
online, they have the advantage of targeting their consumers through cost effective and examined techniques. An example of such a method is SEO.
The requisite of SEO is established. It is part of a structure which keeps companies afloat. If done well it is an approach which can bring visitors to websites who are most likely to convert. Utilising keyword rich content, high quality and relevant link building, blogging and appropriate tagging- without wanting to over simplify the whole industry- there is no reason why a specific website should not be on page one of the search engine results. It is important to recognise, the unmatched advantage to ranking on page one of Google, Yahoo or Bing. Utilising figures from three data sets and studies which focus on such an issue; AOLs Data Leak, Cornell University Eye Tracking study and the BrandSoftech.com study, it was found that approximately 95.91% of all clicks occur on page one of the search engine results pages. A good SEO campaign can help attain such results.
Not only does SEO enable businesses to rank high on search engine results pages but it has become an interactive method allowing them to reach possibly millions of customers. Utilising blogs, RSS feeds, interacting on social media and participating in forum discussions, SEO is an efficient method of connecting to customers directly. Alongside this is the clear ability of SEO to provide fresh information to a target audience, which is an optimum method of retaining visitors and ensuring that they return to a website continually.
Subsequently it is fundamental to choose the most effective SEO company. Here are some tips one should keep in mind when hiring one:
- Long term relationship- SEO is a continuous process and thus it is important to choose an SEO company which you can create such a relationship with, the novelty of changing SEO companies in no longer as readily available in a recession.
- Amenities- since you are faced with a deteriorating budget find an SEO company which provides the most individual, personal campaigns to provide you with the most effective results.
- Time- is money, and so an SEO company which focuses on deadlines and the timely execution of strategies is vital.
- Proficiency- unarguably the most important tip. Find an SEO company which is renowned for delivering results. The team should include experienced individuals who not only know their business but have familiarity in yours also.
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