If you talk with me about web sites and web development, you’ll hear me go on and on about “web presence”.
Web Presence ~What is it?
The short analysis claims that web presence is what turns up on the internet(Google/Bing/Yahoo searchs, primarily)about you or your business. It may be reviews, it may be a directory listing, it might be a court report, a news story in the local paper online or your name in some blogpost; and you may not like your web presence.
I can instantly think of 3 situations where a client discovered that their web presence wasn’t helping them in the least.
One instance involved a blogposting about the clients first business operation, from more than a decade ago in a small town hundreds of miles away. The posting claimed that “[So-and-so The-Client] was no longer in the business of [So-and-So's Fine Business Operation], having closed back in…“!
This was the extent of the description that came up on Google’s page 1 when you went looking for this client, by name.
He had web presence and he didn’t even have a web site at that point!
Another client had a website but anytime one went searching for the business, even by name, an article that referenced a former business associate would turn up all over page 1, without the business itself ever getting named. The business did show up in the search results but, typically, 2 or 3 pages back in the ranks, where few folk bother to tread.
Again, web presence with little benefit.
There are various flavors of web presence and you may not like them all. Police logs, court reports and all manner of ambiguous, or worse, purposely malicious postings can, and will contribute to your web presence; you can, and should do whatever you can to take control of your web presence.
Web Presence and DownRiver Clientele
One of the services of the DownRiver Group is to provide web presence that makes one stand out in the extraordinarily-crowded web and that flaunts, that proudly parades, your valuable, your necessary, your transcendant services and/or products.
Achieving the web presence you deserve starts with giving you a winning web site, it doesn’t end there. It can include a whole host of tactical tools from the world of web 2.0, and it should include some basic, physical world tactics to enhance web presence.
Some examples of what we mean:
Web 2.0 Tools/Tactics ~Get a blogging account, with a name tailored to your business niche and type out a business relevent blogpost, every day. Make sure it
includes your keywords/phrases without being “spammy”. Get a Twitter account and use it(and not for sharing your lunch details).
Physical World Tactic ~Put your domain name, your url on every piece of printed material. Take out ads in the relevent section of periodicals; newspapers,
trade magazines, etc.
How To Tell You’ve Got Web Presence
Acheiving web presence requires a certain investment; either in time, or iin money but usuially in both. The agenda though, is the same with any marketing strategy and tool; Get Proper Web Presence Get Return on Investment.
The only way to properly determine if your theories and tactics are working and making you money is by employing some accurate metrics. These may be in the form of an online coupon that’s redeemed by new customers, it may be the email response to a free offer or contest. The metric for tracking your web presence may be free tracking services whereby proprietary code, embedded within your site, allows viewable tracking of unique vistors per day/week/month/year along with a host of data including how the visitors found you, where they came from, how long they stayed and more.
Get The Details of Web Presence
Contact us about getting the web presence you want and need. While we’ve laid out the bare basics to help you get that web presence, that web success, there are many tools and tactics that can be employed to take you to the top of the heap of web sites, web search terms and web competitors, and we know what they are and how to employ those web presence tools and tactics.
After all, you found us, didn’t you?
Safe surfing!
I’m happy to announce we’ve launched the DownRiver Group email marketing service, called the Mailstream, along with publishing the 1st issue of our newsletter, DownRiver Currents. If you didn’t receive that issue, you can view it 
