It used to be that designing an attractive website to promote your company and products was fairly straightforward. After you designed your site and built a few keywords into the code, you would simply submit the site to the search engines or a directory, grab an iced tea and wait for the traffic.
That model worked fairly well in 1996 but if you are still following this strategy in 2005, you are effectively non-existent on the internet. Why? There are now dozens of search engines and directories and somewhere in the area of 80 million websites on the www. Still think folks are finding you?
So how does the average consumer find your company? They type in a couple of keywords into a search engine and are then presented with thousands of your competitors' websites.
Let's say your company is Walt's Widgets. You have a pretty website with pictures of your widgets, a nice "about us" page, maybe some employee pictures and a picture of your beautiful building. It all looks good on the website but when Mr. Consumer types "widgets" into Google, poor old Walt's Widgets is on page 620 of the search results!
How can this be? Your site is not optimized for the search engines and is not being indexed by the search engine spiders and robots so you aren't being seen!
Research has shown that the average surfer will only review the first three pages of search results and will not drill down any deeper. If you are on page 62 of the search results, you effectively don't exist!
Surfers and search engines view a website completely differently and for you to appear on the first three pages of search results is critical to your continued profitability. You must know what the search engines are looking for, what relevance they are placing on your keywords, what elements of your site have a "welcome sign" for the spiders and, most importantly, know what keywords the surfer is using in his search. Just because you sell widgets it doesn't mean that "widgets" is the term being used the most by surfers when looking for your product.
SEO, Search Engine Optimization, is the process of analyzing keywords, reviewing search trends, analyzing link popularity, building code tags, analyzing your competition, optimizing pages within your website to be search engine friendly, editing web pages, submissions to directories and search engines, and reciprocal link building?just to name a few.
What you are after with SEO is not getting the highest number of website visitors. What you are actually seeking are qualified site visitors who have an interest in buying what you're selling. Professional SEO can help deliver a targeted audience to your business. After all, what would you rather have? 500 site visitors with a 1% conversion rate or 100 site visitors with a 10% conversion rate?
Professional SEO is critical to your company's web presence so if your site was designed by your summer intern in 2002 or your bookkeeper's son as part of his high school "media class", I assure you that you have some work to do.
Start with a good website design featuring good content and navigation. Then, utilize an SEO professional who can wring the most out of your website and deliver dollars to your doorstep.
Allan Gunnneson is the CEO of Gunner Web Group (http://www.gunnerweb.com), an internet marketing, website design, web hosting and search engine optimization company based in Kansas. Republishing this article is permitted if the content is presented in full and all credits to the author are presented on your site along with the originating URL (http://www.gunnerweb.com).
I built my website, it's perfect. My chosen subject of... Read More
The search engine giants are locked in an all out... Read More
As soon as you register your domain name, submit it... Read More
Have you ever stopped to think how much time is... Read More
Today, SEO is swiftly approaching saturation point. More and more... Read More
SEM - Research Measures SuccessSearch engine marketing success comes from... Read More
Why valid HTML code is crucial to your web site's... Read More
MLM has been around way before the Internet. It is... Read More
Its a matter of here today, gone tomorrow at the... Read More
Most Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts agree that links back... Read More
We all know that the lion's share of web traffic... Read More
SEO, not again!, you may groan. The webmaster world is... Read More
Anyone who's been on the net any time at all... Read More
A recent Search Engine Experiment Demonstrates how by combining Key... Read More
Don't share this with people of a nervous disposition because... Read More
Content Management Systems and search engine optimization (SEO) used to... Read More
So you have a beautiful website that you paid a... Read More
Sometimes a search engine optimization company will miss that glaring... Read More
More and more webmasters are building websites with publicly available... Read More
Chances are you have been on the Internet and have... Read More
At One Time Local Searches were reserved for services like... Read More
For anyone looking to enhance their Google Page Rank (PR)... Read More
What follows is a condensed version of a conversation that... Read More
The first step in a search engine optimization campaign is... Read More
Your title tag is the most important 3 to 12... Read More
What once many people thought they had a penalty, is... Read More
There are many facets to SEO and the search engines... Read More
What does all this SEO jargon mean.Have you ever been... Read More
Hilltop is one of the major concepts underpinning Google's search... Read More
SEO training can be overwhelming. There are literally hundreds of... Read More
If you've been involved in SEO (search engine optimization) for... Read More
With search engines like Google currently indexing over 8 billion... Read More
Blogging software is really a simple Content Management System (CMS)... Read More
Dynamic pages and the Search Engines By Clare Lawrence 10th... Read More
The robots.txt file is an exclusion standard required by all... Read More
If you read The Search Engine Showdown,... Read More
SEM - Research Measures SuccessSearch engine marketing success comes from... Read More
Google this, Google that, Google Google Google.......My name is Debbie... Read More
SEO companies come in all shapes and sizes. You've got... Read More
If they want to have success, companies should do everything... Read More
There is a lot of competition to get good spots... Read More
Have you heard of website optimization ? If you are... Read More
HELP! My PR page rank is grey, call the development... Read More
1. Google love ...Google and all its programming is not... Read More
So how do you get a top listing in Google... Read More
Computers have become a way of life for people around... Read More
You've selected an appropriate Online Business Opportunity. That is not... Read More
Why is it that webmasters are so quick to blame... Read More
As with any good web developer, the ability to time... Read More
Its a matter of here today, gone tomorrow at the... Read More
Uniquely built web sites can create unique issues when being... Read More
You can rank number one (Or at least in the... Read More
Google Sitemaps is a new tool for website owners and... Read More
Okay I admit it. I was kidding. I can't guarantee... Read More
This is part one of ten in this search engine... Read More
Keyword density. When it comes to SEO copywriting, this has... Read More
Everyone is looking for "secrets" about how to get more... Read More
It all happened 3 months back, I have a blog... Read More
When it comes to search engine optimization strategy, there are... Read More
The most important thing you can do for your business... Read More
One of the most important steps in any site's publicity... Read More
Alexa toolbar also useful to Browse expired websites database. Many... Read More
Which SEO hat do you wear? Is it white or... Read More
There is really only one search engine to worry about... Read More
Blogging software is really a simple Content Management System (CMS)... Read More
It's unfortunate that many website owners are so hung-up on... Read More
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) |