Help Your Customers to Find You
by Rebecca Button on January 10th, 2008
The World Wide Web is filled with millions of websites from people all across the globe. This can be a bad thing for those who cannot weed through the crowd to get seen by customers. For those who can, however, it means millions in potential sales. With this many people and this much information, there is only one way to be found … through the search engines.
Basically, the websites on the first page of the search engine results will get seen by the most people, followed by the second page. Even fewer people venture to the third page and by the time you reach the tenth page, your potential viewers have trickled down to nearly none.
Unfortunately, some people are lucky if their website even makes it to the tenth page. So, how can a business overcome this, especially a small one? By having your website effectively optimized for search engines. This is known as search engine optimization, AKA SEO.
SEO is a science that many people have perfected, and it has taken time and dedication for them to do so. There are so many rules that go into the algorithms that Google, Yahoo, and other search engines use, that the laws of SEO are changing daily. SEO is more than choosing the right keywords, it also includes keyword density, keyword placements, article length … and that is just the beginning.
There are only ten spots on each search engine results page (or SERP), which means that your website needs to be at least the tenth best optimized website out there in order to make it to the first page. Many business owners do not have the time to dedicate to learning the constantly-changing rules of SEO, in order to keep their website visible by consumers; so, they deicide to leave this important task up to the experts.
An SEO/SEM firm has the talent and know-how necessary to keep you at the top of your competition and in the view if potential customers. Ten spots is not a lot when you think about the billions of websites out there. When you need to be the best, the only way to succeed is to rely on the experts.
You also have the help of a cornucopia of online resources – everything from e-books, to blogs, to SEO tools – to give you tips, tricks, and recommendations. Here are a few we recommend:
SEO Fast Start – offers a comprehensive free e-book that gives you the basics on getting started with SEO.
SEOBook – a blog, free tools, and a highly recommended, inexpensive e-book are available here.
SmallBusinessBrief – social bookmarking site for small businesses with tons of articles on search engine marketing.