Put yourself in your potential customer's shoes for a moment. They're looking for a product or service (which your business provides), so they type a relevant keyword into Google. (Yes, try that now - just play along, we have a point!)
Now check out the results on the first page. Is your website on there? Now look through the next four pages. Is your website included? If not, your website could be missing out on some valuable traffic. Which means ... your company is missing out on some valuable business!
So put yourself in your potential customer's shoes again; if they were looking for this product or service, would they see a company in the first five pages of Google that meets their requirements? Most likely, the answer is yes. And most likely, your potential customer would click through to the website, give them a call, and give them their business. Business that YOUR company wants!
That means if that had been a real customer, your business just missed the boat, and your competition got them instead. Frustrating, isn't it? Especially when you've put a lot of time, money and effort into creating a great website.
Luckily for you, the solution is as simple as three letters: SEO. SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is something you're going to be hearing a lot more of, so let's get you better acquainted!
Search Engine Optimisation is all about increasing the visibility of your website in search results, using search engines such as Google. Believe it or not, when you type something into Google, the millions of results are not presented to you in randomised order - search engines have complex processes whereby they select which websites will be most relevant and helpful to the searcher.
But you don't need to know about all the details - we'll leave that up to Google. All you need to know is how to use it to your advantage! There are some basic techniques you can use, such as the use of keywords throughout your website content, and in meta tags and meta keywords. You can also use techniques such as link building to bring more traffic to your website.
Are you catching on yet? Hopefully it's dawned on you by now why SEO is so important. But if not, we'll spell it out for you: SEO = Lots of traffic to your website, and lots of traffic = Lots of business! Without SEO, having a website is essentially like having a really fantastic billboard, floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
The good news is, we can grab that billboard and put it right next to the highway during rush hour (figuratively!).
But if you don't have the time, inclination or know-how to increase the SEO on your website, don't worry - that's what the experts are for! Give us a call and we'll be happy to let you know how we can help you get the most out of your website. And don't forget to check in for our next blog post, where we'll go into more detail about how you can boost your search engine ranking.