Craig Allen: Women’s Fest 2014 Offers Attendees Effective Business Solutions

This year’s Women’s Festival 2014 featured many highly experienced speakers offering a broad range of topics, each focusing on solutions to help women business owners build their companies. The theme — “Tech, Talk & Trade” — underscored the growing importance of technology and the Internet for success in today’s highly competitive marketplace.

Each year the Women’s Festival, which was held over the weekend at Earl Warren Showgrounds, celebrates accomplishments and nurtures the dreams of women in an interactive, multicultural and multitracked program and expo focusing on the critical areas of women’s lives: personal, professional, philanthropic and planet. The goal of the event, and others like it, is to foster women’s self-empowerment worldwide.

The Women’s Festival was a sponsored project of the NAWBO-California Education Fund. The festival included a professional business expo, awards program, and educational and enlightening discussions led by renowned speakers and authors.

One of the presenters at this year’s Women’s Fest was Taylor Reaume, founder of the Santa Barbara-based online marketing agency Search Engine Pros. Reaume discussed common pitfalls of website marketing strategies, SEO marketing, social media marketing and email marketing to help attendees develop a winning corporate Internet marketing strategy.

Today, any business owner can build a basic website and list it with Google and other web browsers. Some believe this is all there is to building a successful online business.  Unfortunately, for those who stop there, the probability of success is very low. An effective, comprehensive online marketing strategy is an essential element of any successful online business today.

Reaume discussed average budgets and online marketing costs associated with growing a business on the web using Google Adwords marketing and SEO campaigns. He also presented web marketing pricing models and answered questions about how to get the best price on web marketing services. Attendees gained a thorough understanding of the importance of search engine optimization and Google search marketing when growing a business online.

“I’m happy to be associated with one of the premier events in Santa Barbara for empowering women,” Reaume said. “Today’s women in leadership roles need a solid understanding of how to use the power of search marketing to enhance the visibility and viability of their Santa Barbara companies.

“My remarks were intended to provide advice on the best WordPress strategies, email marketing tactics and online marketing plans that attendees can implement themselves to give their business a boost. Attendees who visited our booth received a 30-page website health diagnosis and Google rank report.”

Reaume is offering a limited number of these same reports on a first-come, first-served basis. Call him at 1.800.605.4988 for more information.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of formatting a website with specific tactics, keywords, phrases and other techniques to affect the visibility of websites in search engine results. For example, each search engine, such as Google, has a very complex algorithm, or mathematical formula, that is used to rank websites so that when a user types in a search word, Google can decide which websites to list and in what order.

The goal of SEO is to have your website appear at or near the top of the list, when a user types in search words that relate to your business. For example, if the business sells bicycles, the owner would want his or her website address to appear at or near the top of the list when a user types in bike, bicycle, Specialized (any brand), etc.

As a web marketing strategy, SEO programs consider how search engines work, what the target demographic searches for, and the keywords used in the search process. SEO strategies may include social media marketing, a high-quality SEO news release strategy, or Google AdWords marketing programs.

Companies like Search Engine Pros can design and implement customized SEO strategies for any type of business. These strategies can maximize the traffic to the company’s website, and also can help improve click-through rates, meaning the percentage of visitors to the website who click on other pages or links within the site, including purchase links.

As Reaume relates, building a successful online business is not just about getting potential customers to your website, it’s about getting them there, and then motivating them to take action to purchase your goods or services once they arrive on your website.

By tracking the statistics from the website over time, and various SEO techniques are implemented, SEO experts like Reaume can fine-tune the SEO strategy to improve click-through rates, thereby increasing sales.

The best website in the world will not drive business success if no one visits the site. By using an effective SEO strategy in concert with a highly impactful website, business owners can lay the foundation for a successful online business that is sustainable over the long term.

This year’s Women’s Festival was a fantastic venue for women business owners, as well as other attendees, to learn about a wide array of effective business enhancing strategies, including SEO. This was a fantastic event that is sure to gain in popularity in the future.

Search Engine Pros is located at 201 W. Montecito St. As web marketing professionals, Search Engine Pros offers a wide range of online marketing services, including SEO marketing, email marketing, PPC (Pay Per Click Google Adwords), and SEO web design. Visit the website and Facebook page or call 800.605.4988 to request a complimentary copy of 101 Ways to Drive Traffic.

— Craig Allen, CFA, CFP, CIMA, is president of Montecito Private Asset Management LLC and founder of Dump Your Debt. He has been managing assets for foundations, corporations and high-net worth individuals for more than 20 years and is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA charter holder), a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) and holds the Certified Investment Management Analyst (CIMA) certification. He blogs at Finance With Craig Allen and can be contacted at craig@craigdallen.com or 805.898.1400. Click here to read previous columnsor follow him on Twitter: @MPAMCraig. The opinions expressed are his own.