Any good ad man can tell you that ‘image is everything’ when it comes to branding products. That’s especially important when it comes to highly competitive niches where different products of similar quality are vying for sales. In the online world, however, image is only half the battle.

You just can’t afford to focus on one aspect of sales and overlook the other. If you put all your efforts into generating traffic, you may find that you don’t get an increase in sales if you haven’t also concentrated on your site design.

Conversely, have you focused too much on creating a company image and not enough on SEO and traffic generation? It doesn’t do any good to have the perfect website if nobody can find it.

Let’s take a hypothetical example of cosmetics. Cosmetics sales are largely image-driven. The best eye cream looks exactly like any other eye cream unless it is presented properly. Your first job is to be sure that your website design, graphic design and content are professionally done. A cheap-looking presentation makes your products look cheap, too.

Once that’s done, you’ve got to get your team working on getting traffic to your site. There are many great SEO tools that can be used to this end. Getting traffic requires a different approach. In this case, your keywords play an important part. Keywords are the words most people are likely to use on search engines when they’re looking for something. Someone looking for eau de parfum spray is just as likely to type in ‘eau de cologne’ or just ‘perfume’ as they are ‘eau de parfum.’ You need to be sure to use all relevant keywords.

You have to think in broad terms as well when you’re selling brand names. There are many brands of space heaters, for example, but there’s only one Delonghi space heater. If you’re selling just one brand of a product, you must bear in mind that you will be severely limiting your potential market if you just focus your SEO efforts on that product. Most searches will be done for ’space heaters, ‘ ‘heaters, ‘ or the singular of those words. You need your keyword density to be balanced right in order to maximize your exposure.

Just as in the cosmetics example above, if you’re selling any quality product, it must be presented well. Delonghi is a quality product and deserves a quality website and product description.

Marketing and advertising online require both SEO and good design. If you broaden your scope and use this two-pronged attack, you will achieve far better results.