A jaw-dropping 91% of consumers are now searching online before spending their hard-earned money on products or services. This is great if you are a household brand name that EVERYONE already knows about. But if you are a small business owner, the small fish in a big pond that the internet is, you need to have a website which fights for every click and page view from that 91% of consumers in your city who are looking for you.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the key to allowing your website to attract more than its fair share of traffic from the public, from those with credit cards in hand ready to buy!
SEO is sometimes described as an art form; a mixture of technical skills relating to the most current programming languages and content management systems on the market, and also awareness of the latest algorithms used by the top internet search engine companies.
Those algorithms seek to index every inch of the web, categorizing and meticulously organizing every link, image and story they can find, promoting and returning the highest quality websites which are relevant to the never-ending keyword searches being submitted by users.
At the same time, these algorithms try to weed out sites that provide false, misleading or broken links and sites that provide low-value, fake or irrelevant information. They also penalize sites with broken indexes and links that prevent search engine “crawlers” from continuing on their never-ending journey to index and categorize every site.
You may not even be aware that your current content management system (CMS) could be sabotaging your online marketing efforts by preventing top search engine bots from promoting your site to where it should be in terms of page ranks for specific keyword searches related to your products, industry, and location.
All of these variables are constantly in a state of flux. The algorithms currently being used by one search engine, may be adopted by another; or may be discontinued completely. Certain content mgmt. systems will play nice with search engines by default, others may need some coaxing and custom configuration. Keeping abreast of these issues is actually a career unto itself. Meanwhile, you still have your core business to run.
A solid piece of advice relating to SEO is don’t take any chances. Consult with a professional. Web designers who know the industry inside and out, from online marketing, coding, branding, app development and search engine optimization greatly simplify this ongoing effort to allow your websites to rank prominently in search results for the keywords and phrases relevant to your company and physical location.
Extra Reading: 231 SEO Checklist
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