Should You Optimize Your Website For The Search Engines
Author: Earl Gardner
As more and more small businesses set up their own websites, a very common question the business owners ask themselves is 'should I optimize my website?'. The answer to this is a resounding yes, it is crucial. The main reason for this is that the majority of people who land on others' websites do so after carrying out a search on the search engines. And significantly, over 70% of those searches are carried out on Google. If you are not sure how to get high ranking on Google then you might want to strongly consider reading on.
It is important to keep in mind that your goal is to increase traffic to your website and to convert as many of those visitors into customers. The reason I say this is because a lot of people think it is enough to have a number 1 ranking on Google and then they have reached the Holy Grail. However this is usually not the case. The first thing you need to do is to research and select the most appropriate keywords that you think customers will use as search terms to find a company like yours. After that you need to separate those to filter out those that are being used regularly, by a lot of people. Those are the keywords that you need to rank highly for, and not only that, but you need to rank on the first page of the search engine results pages, since most people don't go past page 1 of the results pages when carrying out searches. If you remember these things then you are well on your way yo getting positive SEO results.
Don't take away the impression that Google is the only way to gain visibility for your website, there are, as we alluded earlier, other search engines such as Yahoo, Bing and AOL. And getting high ranking in these will also help you to bring traffic to your website (again, as long as the successfully ranked keywords are those that are being searched often by the public). You can also post your website's address in places like online directories, social networks, in your signature when you comment in blogs and forums, and of course when you get other websites to link back to your website. All of these things not only give you the potential to get others to click through to your website, but just as important, will give you those all important incoming links that will aid you in getting high search engine rankings.
So how important is optimizing your website? In reality you could simply ignore the optimization of your site and the visibility it brings from the search engines, but at that point what is the point of having a website? If you are going to rely on handing out your business card which contains your website URL for others to see, then you may as well simply just hand out brochures to these same people since they are the only ones who will get to see what you have to offer anyway. That will save them the time it takes to go to your website after they have your business card in hand. It would pretty much be like dressing up in your best suit or dress and sitting at home, hoping and waiting for someone to drop by to see how good you look. However, if you dress up and then invite others to come and visit you then you are more likely to have success. Think of search engine optimization as being your invite to others to drop by to your website.
One of the first things you need to know, before spending money and time building a website, is how you are going to get others to come and visit the site, and how will make sure those that do drop by are potential customers, rather than casual browsers. Even if your budget doesn't stretch to having a professional carry out your optimization there are many websites and books that discuss the subject and if you invest some time researching the subject you should be able to do a decent job yourself on your site. This is the very least you should do if you want to seek any advantage over your competition. If they optimize their website and you also carry out that task then at least you are competing with them. However if they are optimizing and you are not, then you can be sure that you are simply handing over the vast majority of prospective customers to them without at least putting up a fight.
Learn more about search engine optimization by visiting Earl's websitewww.admseo.com.
It is important to keep in mind that your goal is to increase traffic to your website and to convert as many of those visitors into customers. The reason I say this is because a lot of people think it is enough to have a number 1 ranking on Google and then they have reached the Holy Grail. However this is usually not the case. The first thing you need to do is to research and select the most appropriate keywords that you think customers will use as search terms to find a company like yours. After that you need to separate those to filter out those that are being used regularly, by a lot of people. Those are the keywords that you need to rank highly for, and not only that, but you need to rank on the first page of the search engine results pages, since most people don't go past page 1 of the results pages when carrying out searches. If you remember these things then you are well on your way yo getting positive SEO results.
Don't take away the impression that Google is the only way to gain visibility for your website, there are, as we alluded earlier, other search engines such as Yahoo, Bing and AOL. And getting high ranking in these will also help you to bring traffic to your website (again, as long as the successfully ranked keywords are those that are being searched often by the public). You can also post your website's address in places like online directories, social networks, in your signature when you comment in blogs and forums, and of course when you get other websites to link back to your website. All of these things not only give you the potential to get others to click through to your website, but just as important, will give you those all important incoming links that will aid you in getting high search engine rankings.
So how important is optimizing your website? In reality you could simply ignore the optimization of your site and the visibility it brings from the search engines, but at that point what is the point of having a website? If you are going to rely on handing out your business card which contains your website URL for others to see, then you may as well simply just hand out brochures to these same people since they are the only ones who will get to see what you have to offer anyway. That will save them the time it takes to go to your website after they have your business card in hand. It would pretty much be like dressing up in your best suit or dress and sitting at home, hoping and waiting for someone to drop by to see how good you look. However, if you dress up and then invite others to come and visit you then you are more likely to have success. Think of search engine optimization as being your invite to others to drop by to your website.
One of the first things you need to know, before spending money and time building a website, is how you are going to get others to come and visit the site, and how will make sure those that do drop by are potential customers, rather than casual browsers. Even if your budget doesn't stretch to having a professional carry out your optimization there are many websites and books that discuss the subject and if you invest some time researching the subject you should be able to do a decent job yourself on your site. This is the very least you should do if you want to seek any advantage over your competition. If they optimize their website and you also carry out that task then at least you are competing with them. However if they are optimizing and you are not, then you can be sure that you are simply handing over the vast majority of prospective customers to them without at least putting up a fight.
Learn more about search engine optimization by visiting Earl's websitewww.admseo.com.
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