Published on the 30th November 2010: Sunshine Coast Daily
So, you are a business with a website.You might get one or two emails a week from people who have found you on the net.
Then you engage a search engine optimisation specialist and all of a sudden you are booked out every single day.
Mark Edwards is used to this type of scenario. He creates it with his team of programmers and designers at Noosa business iEnhance every day of the week.
He started the business in 2008, but even in two short years, there have been endless blink-and-you'll-miss-them changes to the way businesses promote themselves online.
"When I first started, online marketing was fairly simple. There was no social media just a few years ago, no Facebook or Twitter.
"Search engine optimisation meant adding a few meta tags; now it is increasingly complex and keeping up and ahead of change is vita.
"Internet business use is expanding rapidly too, across generations, cultures and physically across countries too. Competition online is increasing accordingly. Businesses really must have practical, not just pretty websites and online marketing plans to compete effectively 24-7."
Mark Edwards works with a range of businesses on the Sunshine Coast and overseas including resorts, private detectives, car yards and small businesses.
"We worked closely with Noosa Riviera, a boutique resort in Noosaville, who cam to us after laboriously managing their Adwords (pay per click) campaign," he said.
"We used the data they had gathered through Adwaords, the researched a strong keyword set for them and began our search engine optimisation campaign.
"We quickly drove the same amount of quality trafic to their website for less cost. We recently launched their new website and since then they've noticeably converted more potential customers and their rankings have risen dramatically so people find them and book fast, because they are at the top of the search list."
"Mr Edwards said the most important SEO tip was to ensure any website content was relevant, interesting, regularly updated and substantial.
"And make sure other sites are acknowledging you (if they use your content)," he said.
"Search engines are here to stay, so it should absolutely be part of a marketing or advertising budget to help online customers out there come to you."
By Rebecca Marshall - Business Editor of the Sunshine Coast Daily