I’ve seen a few articles talking about getting your business off the ground. Obviously starting with the proverbial website or the pervasive Blog. One thing that seems to be missing from these repeated published works… Search Engine Optimization…
To me, it seems like the most natural step in getting your business on the web. Set up a website; check, implement a Blog; check, search engine results… hello? search, engine, results…? anyone there?
I want you to read this next paragraph closely. Make sure that you understand what I am talking about, and make sure that if you are going to talk to a web company (hopefully this one), you will ask for the following information/advice.
Search engine optimization is just as vital to your website as your logo. You can have a great website, you can have a rather useful and educational Blog. But what if no one knows they exist. How are your customers going to find you? You are in Des Moines, Clive, or Waukee. This is Iowa; you don’t have to try very hard to get great local search engine results. Local search results are the easist to acheive.
Take a few moments and make sure that your web strategy includes search engine optimization. Now, make sure that your project INCLUDES optimization and that you aren’t paying $1800 for so-called ‘optimization and submission’ services.
Want to optimize your website straight out of the gate? Make sure that your web company knows what they are doing. Just because they promise traffic, does not mean that they are out for your best interest, or bringing you the best clients.
I recently had a conversation with a small business owner about her optimization services. She paid $500 a month for six months to ‘get search engine traffic’ and ‘thousands of visitors’ to her website. You know what the results were… very little search engine results for ANY term/products on her site. She experienced well over 2,000 natural visitors a week (from other websites – not search engines) for about six weeks or so. Needless to say, that after having OVER 15,000 visitors to her website, she made only three sales. THREE! What a waste of her money, time, energy, and website visitors’ time.
Website visitors need to become customers (conversions). You need to have a nice conversion rate to justify $500 per month. If you sell a $250.00 product, you should plan on selling 4 products to justify that $500.00 – this would be a just return for not only the investment, but the time.
YOU DON’T NEED BOLOGNA FROM A WEBSITE FIRM! What you need are real conversions and intentional visitors from organic search engine results. Visitors that want to purchase your product. Not visitors that come from a website about diapers (unless you are selling diapers). These companies list your website in bogus, unreliable ‘online malls’, or a so-called ‘web directory’ that only hurt you in the end. The sites are often frowned upon as “link farms” rather than legitimate websites.
Don’t think for a second that Google or Yahoo! isn’t aware of these ‘black-hat’ and almost ’search engine spam’-like techniques. They look bad for you, and you won’t get the traffic or desirable results that you deserve.
OK, so let’s look at what you need…
- You need to have your website optimized properly.
- You need to have your products optimized properly.
- You need to have your head examined if you think differently.
You can do most of your own optimization, if you simply think about it. Go to Google or Yahoo!, and search for the products that you sell. Search for whatever you want to find. Then, take a look at the companies that are in the top ten results. Take a look at what page comes up. Look at the wording on the page. What the words are, what order, where they appear in the page (e.g. top, middle, left, etc.). Get a feel for where and what the content is. Then apply the concepts to your own site. You won’t be exactly the same, but you can apply the same principles.
Research any product, study the top ten results for those products and try to understand how you can replicate the results. Remember: search engine results can typically take up to 30 days to surface.
Remember to describe your products in a manner that is VERY representative of the product. Keep in mind that people type the most natural thoughts about the product that they are looking for. If you are looking for an LCD, flat panel television – you may search: 32 inch flat LCD, or flat panel tv, LCD tv, etc. You would want to describe your product using those types of keywords/phrases.
You can always test out pages on your site. Create a test page, submit that page to the search engines (more on how to do that later), and see what happens.
In the meantime, give me a call and we can discuss how to get real results, real fast…
Christian Connett Search Engines search engine results, Search Engines, seo in iowa
