How are you marketing your business on the internet? Trying to get placement for keywords in Google? Creating a fan page in Facebook? Posting a video on YouTube? Or maybe you just have a website that needs “updating” and feel like it’s overwhelming just to get it into the 2000′s.
I guess it’s not a surprise that 10 of top 20 websites in the United States are Web2.0 sites that users can upload content.
How many of the following websites includes posts, tweets, results or reviews from you or your company? Gotta admit, I had to check out Go.com, because I’m not familiar with it. The search is powered by Yahoo.
Take a look at the top sites in the United States as defined by Alexa.
Top Sites in United States
The top 100 sites in United States ranked in order by the last month based on their 1 month Alexa traffic rank. The 1 month rank is calculated using a combination of average daily visitors and pageviews over the past month.
- Google google.com Enables users to search the Web, Usenet, and images. Features include PageRank, caching and translation of results, and an option to find similar pages. The company’s focus is developing search technology.
- Yahoo! yahoo.com Personalized content and search options. Chatrooms, free e-mail, clubs, and pager.
- FaceBook.com the next Friendster facebook.com Biggest Social Networking site in the world.
- YouTube youtube.com YouTube is a way to get your videos to the people who matter to you. Upload, tag and share your videos worldwide!
- Myspace myspace.com Social Networking Site.
- Wikipedia wikipedia.org An online collaborative encyclopedia.
- Windows Live live.com Search engine from Microsoft.
- Blogger.com blogger.com Free, automated weblog publishing tool that sends updates to a site via FTP.
- eBay ebay.com International person to person auction site, with products sorted into categories.
- Craigslist.org craigslist.org craigslist.org
- Amazon.com amazon.com Amazon.com seeks to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Site has numerous personalization features and services including one-click buying, extensive customer and editorial product reviews, gift registries, gift certificates, wish lists, restaurant and movie listings, travel, and photo processing.
- Microsoft Network (MSN) msn.com Dialup access and content provider.
- Twitter twitter.com Social networking and microblogging service utilising instant messaging, SMS or a web interface.
- AOL aol.com America On Line’s portal, offering search, shopping, channels, chat and mail.
- Go go.com A searchable directory, news, stocks, sports and free e-mail.
- ESPN Sportszone espn.go.com Information about all college and professional sports.
- CNN – Cable News Network cnn.com Includes US and international stories and analysis, weather, video clips, and program schedule.
- Bing bing.com bing.com
- LinkedIn linkedin.com A networking tool to find connections to recommended job candidates, industry experts and business partners. Allows registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people they know and trust in business.
- WordPress.com wordpress.com Free blogs managed by the developers of the WordPress software. Includes custom design templates, integrated statistics, automatic spam protection and other features.
So if you’re not blogging using blogger.com or wordpress.com, maybe you’re tweeting on Twitter?
What about the keywords your potential customers are using to try to find your business? Where does your site rank for them in Google, YouTube, Yahoo, Bing and Go? Do you have a company page in Facebook and Linked in? A Twitter account?
If you’re in the midst of creating or revising your strategic marketing program for 2010, you may want to consider the online “findability” factor for your company’s marketing. I don’t see the yellow pages or Thomas Register up there in the top 20. In fact, not even the top 100… however yes to Flickr, Typepad, Twitpic, and Yelp (At yelp.com the members share their favorite recommendations – everything from the latest restaurants and shops, to the best hair salons and spas, to doctors and yoga instructors. )
If your business is consumer focused, you better be all over the internet, but even if your customer is a business to business customer, getting found on the most popular websites when they are looking for you is imperative.
Make a list of the top 10 keyword phrases you think your potential customers search to find you. Now ask your best customers what phrases they would use. This could be interesting.
And yes, your customers will say, “I’d ask a friend, I wouldn’t google it.” But we know that they will want to find your site and check you out before they make a phone call or stop in, right?
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Good stuff, Chris. Especially noticed Amazon…for my clients who are doing their own ecommerce now, staying on Amazon still makes sense.
Lynn:
Thanks for jumping in here. You’re so right, Amazon makes a lot of sense. So many folks don’t even consider it a 2.0 site, but it always is high in the search engines so creating an account and commenting on content that matches your expertise, makes a ton of sense.
Chris
Twitter marketing is 100% the way to go!I use Mass-Follow.com to submit my articles to like 400 places
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