Having already suggested that the Australian Advertising Industry is generally clueless about marketing their own services on the web I thought to monster a couple of other industries. So I had a look at the web sites of 50 West Australian wineries – about 15% of the industry. I checked each for sensible use of Title and Description tags, site maps, animation and links. Here are the findings:

Comment: Some pretty sites; 3 Drops, Moss Wood, Beckett’s Flat and Matilda Estate; shame no-one is seeing them. Honestly, what’s the point if you’re not getting traffic?

Some fine examples of animation kitsch too by the way. If you’re into that sort of thing (then you’re as sick as I am): Amberley Estate, Brookland Valley…

Although my analysis here does not give the whole picture, it suggests a lack of web marketing sophistication, both in the area of web strategy and search engine optimisation.

The larger businesses were only better than the small businesses in one respect; more traffic and more incoming links. They showed no greater online marketing skills.

Businesses can improve their web rankings with a few hours’ work. Much can be done by adding text content that includes the keywords that people type into Google. If you’re selling ‘grenache’, make sure you have a web page, Title and Description tags that mention ‘grenache’. Yell out if I’m going too fast.

Companies wanting to make the web a serious part of their marketing mix should develop a web strategy. This may focus on particular export markets, distribution channels or niche market segments. In almost every case, it will require the company to develop content that is relevant/entertaining/useful to the reader.

Book in for Web Promotion SHOCK – it’s aimed at businesses who want to increase their web traffic. The cost is $75; designed to give usable knowledge that people can implement themselves or pass on to their webmaster.

Most Australian businesses, including some very large ones, have no idea about the basic principles of search engine optimisation. (I recently wrote about advertising agencies as an example). So part of my agenda is to share that knowledge. Here is the SHOCK: it ain’t that tricky.

There are still businesses that view their web site as one of those things you have to have. Like a Business Card. But the Internet has become fundamental to how people collect information. Much more powerful than just another advertising medium. Some of the companies I work with are generating ALL their new business off the Internet because they have web stategies that deliver relevant information to people who are looking.

You don’t need a web site. You need a web strategy. Part of that is usually keywords-based SEO that puts you at the top of the Google results for certain terms. Like I am for marketing consultant Perth and like my clients are for most of their target keyword phrases.

I will probably pick up some work optimising people’s web pages, but for me, it’s not so much about editing the Title tags, it involves working out the best use of the web to deliver a business result.

If you know someone who’s not making the most of the web, I’d appreciate your mentioning the seminar to them. Here is the Web Promotion SHOCK flyer if you’d like to print it out. Register here.

Mischief. The first twelve Advertising Agency web sites I looked at are making no effort to attract web traffic. Either they have as much work as they want or they don’t believe that potential clients search the internet for advertising agencies. Maybe they rely on being in the Yellow Pages.

All sites run fancy Flash animation; none of them deprecate properly for people with JavaScript turned off. The full Flash sites are extremely annoying for users. Hit the Back button in your browser while visiting The Brand Agency, Campaign Palace or Naked and get thrown out of the site. Oh good, I get to look at that animation all over again!

None of the sites have Title tags that include any reference to ‘advertising’, ‘media’ or ‘marketing’. This is part of the reason why none of their sites are found when you type “advertising agency” into Google.

None of the sites have Description tags. Which means that when you type ‘saatchi‘ into Google it tells you this about the company:

Saatchi & Saatchi PR in Romania has been appointed by Alpha Bank, a leading name in the financial sector, to handle its PR account. READ MORE > … Compelling content for English-speaking people interested in Romanian bank Public Relations – alas, I’m one of the few …

Saatchi’s site was broken when I visited; none of the links worked. I tried IE and Firefox and re-downloaded Flash but still nothing. I emailed their webmaster. Waiting on a response. Update: links now working.

When you type GPYR into Google it tells you this about the company:
home; about us · work · services · tools · contact us · brand partners · careers. George Patterson Y&R is Australia’s newest (and oldest) advertising agency …

‘Wunderman‘ gives you this:
Welcome to Wunderman : Welcome to the site for Wunderman, the original direct marketing agency. To get our conversation… Welcome, welcome. Should be called Doorman, not Wunderman.

Clearly none of the agencies understand that you can control the way Google presents your search result. Many of the sites don’t work if you omit the www; this can be fixed with a simple re-direct. And it seems none of them know how to get a full Flash site properly indexed by Google, thereby increasing web traffic. I digress.

DDB have a one page site that allows you only an email link. Times are tough. The design of many sites, such as BMF and Clemenger has not been updated in years. The gratuitous use of sound is particularly 1990s.

JWT, Grey and Singleton Ogilvy make up the twelve.

It’s as if they created their sites before Google was invented.

Oh! Found one traditional agency who know what they’re doing: Marketforce use the words “marketing” and “advertising” in their Title tag and have written one Description tag. As a result, they come up at #12 when you search for “Advertising Agency”. A bit of tweaking would put them in the top couple.

I’m running some half-day seminars on web promotion shortly in Perth. If you’d like to pre-register, give me a yell.