Many people have finally come to see the many advantages and benefits to having a website for their business. Having a website is a great way to get the word out about your company, create connections with your customers and build community with them, have continuous exposure and advertising for your products and services, and more. But what many business owners with new websites do not realize is that just having a website is not enough on its own. Believe it or not, just because your business is online doesn’t mean business is going to start rolling in. Hordes of people aren’t going to start clicking on your site right away. But you spent a lot of time making a nice site and putting lots of great information on there; why wouldn’t they check out your website?
Well the simple answer is, they may not be able to find your site! Think about how you use search engines like Google or Yahoo. When you enter a search term for something like a product or service that you need, how often do you click beyond the first or second page of the search results? People very rarely go past the first page of search results, and really almost never venture beyond the third. But how do you get your site to show up on that first page of search results for your niche? That’s what website search engine optimization is for. So does your site really need optimization? The answer is yes.
One of the search engine optimization things you will want to do for your website is target crucial keywords for your niche. You don’t need to come up on the first page for every single thing having to do with your business, and you don’t need – or even want – to come up high on search engine results for things that are irrelevant to the services you offer. Some people mistakenly think that any traffic is good traffic, but the truth is, traffic isn’t going to do you any good if that traffic doesn’t convert into paying customers. So if you sell deep sea fishing trips in the Atlantic, it’s not going to do you any good to come up on a search for Atlantic cod for someone who is trying to figure out what the best brand is to buy in the grocery store. What you need to do is target the most important keywords or phrases that people who are actually interested in what you offer will be typing into their search engine. For this example, one such phrase would be “deep sea fishing trips in the Atlantic Ocean”. You want to focus on that phrase and optimize your site to come up in the first results for that phrase. Then you will get customers coming to your site who will be looking to book a deep sea fishing trip in the Atlantic.
Another thing you want to do is get credible links back to your site. You can do this by offering interesting and new information on a regular basis about your niche on your website. Then people will want to link to it. Some people think that all links are created equal, but they’re not. Some links carry more clout than others, so what you need to do for your site is build relationships with other credible and authoritative sites. That way, when you have a genuine relationship with them and they understand what you are offering and what you can deliver to their readership that will help their readers out, they will want to link back to your site. The more credible links you have pointing back to you, the more the search engines will see that you matter in your niche and it will boost your search engine result rankings. Plus the more useful information you put out, the more people will want to engage with your company.
