Egyptian companies do not realise the potential of an online presence, according to a study conducted by the Egyptian Business Directory and Absolit Consulting, evaluating the online performance of Egypt’s top 50 companies.
The top five companies selected in the list of overall online presence were Mobinil, the Commercial International Bank (CIB), National Société Générale Bank (NSGB), Egyptian Satellites (NileSat) and Orascom Development Holding (ODH).
They were evaluated according to various criteria, including website reputation, the website traffic, the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) indicating search engine visibility, and social network presence.
From the five companies, Mobinil ranked first in the Web and Social Web categories, while NileSat ranked best in the SEO category. CIB and Mobinil ranked worst in the SEO category, while NileSat ranked last in the Web and NSGB ranked last in the Social Web category.
“Keywords and Search Engine Optimisation make up a huge part of a company’s online presence,” the report read. “However, many websites of the country’s top companies do not really work, have bad back links, or too little keywords.”
Moreover, the report added that the companies do not make attempts to collect the email addresses of their customers or visitors, in order to be able to contact them later on.
The report pointed that NileSat and ODH lead the list of companies that are most visible in search engines, and Mobinil and CIB have the best website reputation and traffic.
“However, 40% of the top 50 companies do not have a Facebook page, and 68% do not have a Twitter account,” the report added.
The report shows that even existing company accounts mostly have an inactive fan-base, which shows that not enough time, money or effort is invested in online engagement with followers.
The 50 companies were extracted from the official list of Egypt’s best performing companies in the stock market for 2013.
They included Abu Qir Fertilizers, Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank Egypt, Al Arafa for Investments & Consultancies (Arafa Holding) , Al Baraka Bank Egypt, Al Watany Bank of Egypt (AWB), National Bank of Kuwait Egypt, Alexandria Containers and Goods , Amer Group Holding, ASEC Company for Mining (ASCOM), Qalaa Holding, Crédit Agricole Egypt, Egyptian Chemical Industries, Egyptian Financial Group – Hermes Holding (EFG Hermes), the Egyptian International Pharmaceutical Industries Company (EIPICO), and the Egyptian Resorts Company.
