SEO Strategies for Growing Companies

great rankings...what now?

[discod]

Okay, I'm very pleased with my position on the search engines for the important keywords, our company is benefitting tremendously, and were really starting to grow into new markets and new product lines.

What more can I do? Here are some things I haven't done:
1. Become a major directory of information for our industry (we just sell to the industry).
2. Develope an affiliate program (thinking about paying smaller sites for sales as a result of banner ads).
3. Fully utilize our large database of customer email addresses (such as sending E coupons or giving monthly prizes or creating general html ads)
4. Given our site some really cool Flash or Video

We have arrived at a good place and I want us to keep growing. I would love to hear from someone who has been where I am now and tried some of my suggestions above.

[seofan]

1,2, and 3 are good. Don't let collected emails from contacts go to waste. Keep in touch with back-end promotions.

Forget 4 unless the Flash or Video truly enhances the visitor experience.

[ritualcoffee]

Have you started hitting international search engines (localized and country sites of the big SEs)?

[DrCool]

Welcome to the board discod. If the site in question is the one in your profile I think all the ideas you suggested will work very well for you.

1. Become a directory of information: Probably one of the most important and effective forms of promotion. If you provide your target market with all the information they need and are looking for relating to your field than they will never have a need to go anywhere else once they find your site. They will come back and back and probably make a purchase eventually.

2. Develop an affiliate program: This could generate some income but I wouldn't expect a fortune off of it. I am sure there are hundreds of personal sites and local clubs relating to your products that you could potentially sign up as affiliates but it probably wouldn't be a product the general public would use.

3. Use your large database of customer email addresses: Yes! Your past customers are more likely to be future customers. If you send them a monthly newsletter with a coupon for $5 off their next purchase or something they will probably buy from you again. You would also keep your name fresh in their mind through the frequent contact.

4. Flash or Video: Some videos on the site would be an added feature that you could include to keep people coming back. I would stay away from flash though.

It looks like you are on the right track with these ideas. You could also try some different things like sponsoring some contests, giving the heads of some local clubs a big discount on a purchase hoping they will pass the word on to their members, and many things like that.

[moe]

I know this is an old post but I thought it might be good to point out that the true advantage of an affiliate program is not the revenue from affilite sales but the fact they tend to generate a lot of good quality, relevant links to your site. I've seen some search engine optimising companies who genrate around 100 fairly low ranking links to an entrance portal and charge people a nasty 12 per month per key word. The shocking thing is that this tends to be all that is needed to get into the top ten for many search terms. A good affiliate scheme does this for free and pays you money at the same time. A good thing to think about is what link you want the people to come in on to give the best performance for search engine optimisation. I'm currently writing my own affiliate script that tests where a link has been followed from to figure out the affiliates commision. I know it's much easier to pass an affiliate variable with the link but that doesn't help the search engines much (though google seems to be able to recognise some variables being passed).
regards
roger