Duane Forrester recently reported that focusing on driving conversations on the web can improve a company's visibility, which will drive site traffic and leads.

Duane Forrester, senior product manager for Bing, recently wrote that marketers who fail to engage in conversation on the web are missing strong opportunities to drive website traffic and boost the visibility of their brands on the web.

“You have to expand your view to include topics such as usability, conversion optimization and user engagement. Long gone are the days where an SEO could state ‘I got the people here, what they do from here is the Product Manager’s concern.'” – Bing’s Duane Forrester

Wasting the chance to interact with prospects puts organizations at a major disadvantage given the growing number of companies engaging audiences on the web. According to Forrester, two of the greatest benefits of a strong presence are the ability to influence brand conversations and attract new prospects. Ultimately, he said engaging online communities is now essential to SEO.

Forrester recently said that too many marketers focus solely on linkbuilding for the success of their search efforts on the web. Alternatively, he suggested developing high-quality content that makes prospects, social followers and others want to link to a site. As more people share content, the chance to drive conversation (and conversion) improves. Aside from including the links in Tweets or Facebook posts, prospects will likely have questions for a company related to their content and industry.

In general, focusing on a strong multi-channel presence aimed at driving conversion through a greater presence and improved conversation is part of the evolution of buying on the web. Brafton recently reported that Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Institute found too many businesses are failing to offer prospects multiple entry points to conversion funnels, which can result in missed leads.

Joe Meloni is Brafton's former Executive News and Content Writer. He studied journalism at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and has written for a number of print and web-based publications.