It’s astonishing how many companies use the build-it-and-they-will come strategy for their websites. You can build it and it may look great, but just having a website doesn’t guarantee anyone will come. Like in the movie Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner wandered aimlessly through his corn field searching for his dream until he took the advice the mysterious voice whispered to him (“build it and he will come”) and built a baseball field. Amazingly, all the old baseball greats magically showed up to play. Wouldn’t it be great if it worked this way for websites? Unfortunately, it doesn’t, leaving many still wandering in the dark, wondering why their websites don’t perform well. Taking a passive approach will prevent your website from reaching its fuller potential. Fortunately, you can take action and then your prospects will come.
After a website is built is when the real work begins. Actively optimizing your website for search engines is how you get visitors to your site. The better you optimize, the better the quality of your visitors. After all, getting just anyone to your site isn’t the point. Getting the right visitors to your site is how your website will contribute to business success.
To compete online, you must coax your website out from the mass of millions of other sites floating around the Internet, waiting to be found. It doesn’t matter whether you offer services or products, are for profit or a non-profit, are big or small, putting effective search engine optimization (SEO) techniques in place will give you an edge on your competition or, at least, level the playing field.
What is SEO?
If you’re in the dark about SEO, you’re sure not alone. Just the thought of it is enough to give most people a headache. Search engine optimization encompasses a variety of techniques and tasks you can perform to help your website be found by the very people you’re trying to reach—your target audience.
Basic SEO can help increase the volume and quality of traffic to your site. You can begin exploring, researching and implementing some basic SEO tactics on your own:
- Register your site with Google, Yahoo, MSN and DMOZ (Open Directory Project), which alerts these search engines to send crawlers to your site for indexing. The search engines must be told your website exists before it can be included in search results.
- Write interesting web content for your prospects, first and foremost, but also take into consideration how search engines find, organize and rank the information that pops up in search results. There are ways to construct content for a more positive outcome on search engines.
- Determine the keywords and key phrases your prospects would most likely use when searching for the products, services or information you offer. Use these keywords in your page titles, page content, meta tags, and meta description.
- Remove obstacles preventing crawlers from including your site in search results. For instance, if your web pages are set up as graphics instead of HTML text, crawlers will not stop to index the information, greatly inhibiting the chances of your site being included in search results.
Why is SEO important?
According to an iProspect study, 62 percent of Internet users click on one of the top 10 results from their search. Nearly 90 percent will conduct a new search if they don’t find what they want after looking at the first three pages of results. Bad news if your site is on page 10.
Studies have repeatedly reported searchers are far more likely to click on an organic result than a paid listing, making SEO a critical function for any business that wants to compete on the Internet. Every time your site is omitted from the first three pages of a search, you’re missing out on potential business.
Make a commitment to improve your website’s visibility by investing a little time to explore SEO and focus first on quick improvements like page titles, keywords, meta tags and meta description. Your site won’t skyrocket to the top 10 rankings, but with a consistent effort over time you can elevate your site in search results.
Have a question about Internet marketing? Send an email to strategywriter@comcast.net or visit www.strategywriter.com.
To learn more about search engine optimization:
How well is your website performing?
Create an SEO blueprint to improve your website
How to gather competitive online data
The Internet Ultimatum: Zero to $1.2 Million in Twelve Months Flat
Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day
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