For those of you who may be unfamiliar with BitWise Solutions, we are an Indianapolis based Web development firm specializing in complex Web solutions, specifically Websites and software applications that are meant to run on the Web.  What Ron has been blogging about the past few weeks sparked me to want to add a little about the strategy that is necessary for a good Website solution.

First, developing a new Website requires an investment; typically, it’s both a time and monetary investment.  A good investment should anticipate a return on that investment; without a return then it’s not an investment it’s a donation.  Assuming that you would like a return on your investment, then it is imperative to start with the overall goals and objectives you have for your business or organization.  If you are a for-profit business, then you are (or should be) looking at ways to grow top-line revenue and decrease costs; your goals and objectives are ways to accomplish either or both.  Some examples of objectives for growing revenue to name a few might include:

• Increase customer retention;
• Increase average order sizes;
• Increase the number of customers;
• Increase repeat sales;

Now we’ll dig a little deeper and work on some strategies for how your Website may be able to help achieve your goals and objectives.  Taking the previous examples we might come up with the following ways a Website might help accomplish the business objectives:

A good Web developer should help you work through specific strategies on how to introduce your products and services via the Web.  Many Web companies focus on the designs and user-interfaces which, don’t get me wrong, play a big part in the overall success of your Website, but the biggest thing to focus on is your business drivers and objectives and ensure that your Website and other online strategies are in line with accomplishing those things.  If it doesn’t help you achieve a goal or objective, then throw it out; it doesn’t need to be there and will only cost you more money in the long run.

Notice that I haven’t talked about your Website goals (yet), but your business goals.  Your business goals should always be the driving force behind what you do on your Website.  Once you have that figured out, then you can move on to your Website goals which should focus on helping you achieve your business goals.

That’s all I have for now, but if any of what I just said in the above paragraphs scares you, don’t worry!  We just happen to specialize in helping people determine their business and Web goals and strategies and then we can help implement those strategies so that you can begin raking in the dough in no time!  Remember, it’s all about the return on investment - make sure you’re getting yours!

I attended the MBO 2009 conference yesterday hosted by Jim Brown and the search engine marketing gurus, EverEffect.  There were some really great speakers and topics tailored around the integration of marketing and technology and with over 200 people in attendance, it was a great event all around!  Some of the topics included:

    * External SEO: Google’s Most Heavily Weighted Aspect by Slingshot SEO’s Jeremy Dearringer;
    * Proving and Improving ROI in Paid Search by EverEffect’s Jim Brown
    * 8 Steps to Squeeze More Out of Your Marketing Leads by Right On Interactive’s Troy Burk
    * The Business Case for Twitter by SilverSquare’s Raquel Richardson
    * The Legal Landscape of Corporate Blogging by Alerding Castor Hewitt’s David Castor
    * Among many others!

The event was a great collaborative effort by many different companies from Indianapolis and abroad but if I had to pick just one thing I learned from yesterday’s conference it would be the session put on by Jeremy Dearringer of Slingshot SEO.  His speech on driving organic SEO traffic to your Website through obtaining links back to your site was invaluable.

There are lots of ways to get links back to your site.  Some of them are more valuable than others and some of them could get you major boosts and some could even hurt you.  The best thing to do is to examine your specific situation and come up with a program that works for your business with the time and resources available to you.  For example, as a Website development firm in Indianapolis, we have the opportunity to get tons of high quality links back to our Website through our client’s Websites.  I knew that backlinks were huge for SEO purposes, but Jeremy’s talk opened my eyes to how much SEO benefit we are missing out on when links back to our Website are not included in the design and implementation of our client’s Websites, with obvious granted permission from the client.  This is a great opportunity to not only bolster our own SEO efforts but to help our clients SEO efforts too by including links to our clients sites on our own Website.

Thank you Mr. Dearringer for the reminder that “Google’s Most Heavily Weighted Aspect” is backlinks… I am inclined to heed your advice.  Why wouldn’t I believe someone who studies this stuff day-in and day-out?

My take-away from this lesson: focus on getting lots of good, quality links back to your Website and watch your Google rankings soar!