Have you had your website optimised?
“A website that can't be found is like a room without a window.”
At a time when the internet is expanding exponentially, it is increasingly becoming harder to be found high in the listings in the search engines results. This is vitally important for the key phrases that are important for a company website that wants to focus on a targeted market whether this is a product, service or geographical area - or more likely a combination of two of these.
By applying a technique called search engine optimisation to a website each of the website pages that make up the website, can focus on a few identified key phrases. These key phrases are those used most frequently by visitors when they carry out a search query in the search engines such as Google looking for the types of services the company provides. By appearing high up in the results that the search engines return you can receive significant more enquiries than those that do not appear in the first few pages of the results. Surveys have shown that the top three pages of results (top 30 results) receive 90% of the enquiries whilst those on the first page receive, on average, 80% more enquiries than those results in positions 11 to 30.
So while the internet represents a significant route to market for so many companies only those that appear high up in the rankings reap the huge rewards. Perhaps surprisingly the internet can be a great leveller where small companies are not significantly disadvantaged relative to large companies. For those small and medium-sized companies who strive to generate enquiries through their website this opportunity beckons for those whose websites are optimised and provide interesting and user-friendly content.
The key for many of these successful websites are that they have had search engine optimisation applied to them. These optimisations techniques are used to align the website and its individual pages with the factors that Google and the other search engines value and reward when they work out the order of the results for each search query. In effect, Google will look at over 100 different measurable factors for each website page, each factor will be weighted and some inter-related. Furthermore these factors and weightings are also continually changing. Google doesn't reveal the factors or the weightings but to professional search engine optimisation specialists many of these factors can be recognised and their relative importance calculated.
Unfortunately not all search engine optimisation specialists have the knowledge or experience to enhance a websites position for the critical keywords for a company. Moreover others will guarantee certain top page positions for keywords - something that even the best search engine optimisation specialists won't give as they know it is totally unethical as only Google knows the precise factors and weightings.
So before you rush off and choose a specialist, check out their credentials and especially look for companies where they have successfully completed search engine optimisation projects. Ask to see case studies and ask them to evaluate your existing website and explain what they will actually do to your website.
Only then should you choose who to use - but completed properly and your websites visibility will increase and your the generation of quality leads will grow.
At Website DNA we provide case studies such as Expert Learning, Chica Ho and EDM Jeep and provide a free Search Engine Optimisation Evaluation Report.
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