Business Planning and Search Engine Marketing: A Match Made in Heaven--Home Business Research

Tip! Program / Management Consultant with specialized ability to help identify and incorporate an organization's vision of success into focused business planning, process and organizational development, meaningful financial reporting, and effective execution and delivery.

In our rush and enthusiasm to jump in and optimize our own or our clients' websites to achieve stellar ranking, we often forget the first, and most important step of all: business and marketing planning.

The business and marketing planning process is not difficult, but it does take time, and that's what most hurried-up cyber folks don't want to hear. After all, things are moving so fast that if you don't get off that dime in a hurry, then someone else will get your spot in the top 10. Well, that's precisely the point. If you get off that dime in too much of a hurry, your site may make it into a top ranking position, but where does that leave you as far as your business goals? And what if you've moved so fast that you're using SPAM? This may certainly be a method to get to the top in a hurry, but it is certainly NOT a method to stay there for any length of time.

Be SMART, in more ways than one. Let's take a look at a simple, straightforward way to set some SMART business objectives before you end up catapulting yourself and your site out of control.

We recently had an SEO project for a resort, and when we asked the owner what his business objective was, he said 100% occupancy all year round.

Well, we happily embarked upon our SEO project thinking that to achieve 100% occupancy meant to improve his site's loading time, identify and strategically place keywords, rewrite text to improve content, and embark upon a linking campaign. In so accomplishing these "specific" objectives, we removed some photographs from several pages to improve loading times and instead created a photo gallery. What we discovered through this exercise was that to the owner, achieving this 100% occupancy objective meant having an aesthetically beautiful site, which meant having the photos exactly as they were, despite their impact on loading times.

As a result of our enlightenment, we created another business plan, this time with the following objectives laid out: 1. Conversion objectives

c. Inspire X% of site visitors to request additional information 2. Achieve steady occupancy growth, 10% per month 3. Review, develop and grow affiliate and advertising goals 4. ROI goals (stated)

As opposed to the first objective, achieve 100% occupancy, the objectives above are definitely specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-lined. However, to ensure that they are achievable and realistic, we will constantly review the plan against our work progress - in fact, we will review it weekly while we are in heavy-duty SEO mode, perhaps reducing to weekly or monthly as the project proceeds into more of a maintenance phase. As it becomes necessary, we will modify the plan and ensure agreement from all parties.

Tip! There is a place for a very high level, longer term strategic vision for your firm, but don't let it be a substitute for a practical vision and strategy that will be the drivers of real action. Keep your business planning horizon between 2-3 years to create plans that are practical, compelling, and stand a fighting chance of execution.

A note here about search engine results: notice that high ranking is not among our stated objectives. The reason for that is we believe it is inherent in the other objectives - in order to achieve conversions that result in reservations, visitor email, and information requests, we will need to accomplish a good ranking, as well as increase site traffic through other means including quality inbound links.

The bottom line is that website success should be driven by good solid business planning, planning that goes beyond merely getting your site high on the search engine results pages. Instead, look at what it is you are really trying to achieve from a business perspective and make sure it is SMART.

Mary Anne Donovan is both a scholar and a practitioner, a balance that "gives me the best of both worlds: the theory behind digital communications and the hands-on experience to know what really works and what doesn't." She is in her tenth year as a professor of technical writing and business communications while at the same time serves as Vice President and Director of U.S. Operations for SEO Literacy Consultants (http://www.seolc.com), a search engine optimization consulting and training company. Mary Anne has worked with computers since they first came out of the closet and into more general application, starting with computerized quality control systems for Kodak photographic and printing processes and now with the fine points of SEO theory and application.