Are you getting more customers by having your business found in the search engine results?
Every single day your potential customers are using the search engines to look for the goods and services you offer. It is estimated that as many as 80% of all searches on the internet are looking for a local business, so if you can’t be found, chances are your competitors will be. Not only do you miss out on sales, your competitors make more money they can invest back in to growing their business and getting further ahead of you. How long can you afford to let that happen?
What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of helping the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing, to know that your website has what people are looking for. The role of the search engines is to display the most relevant websites based on a particular ‘search term’ or ‘keyword’ – the things people type in when looking for your goods and services. When optimised and promoted correctly, your website can be the one viewed by the search engines as being relevant and trustworthy and it will be ranked accordingly in the search results. SEO aims to achieve a ranking in the ‘non-paid’ or ‘organic’ results as shown below.
What Keywords Should I be Optimising for?
As the saying goes ‘You make your money on the way in’. Focusing on increasing the amount of traffic to your website does not mean you will increase your sales and profits. For this reason, we target buyers and ‘buying keywords’. By sending qualified visitors to your site, your conversion ratios will be much higher. Remember, a conversion may not necessarily be making a sale right on the website, it is about getting people to take the action you want them to take. This could be signing up for your newsletter, requesting more information or a quote or picking up the phone and calling you.
Choosing a Search Engine Optimisation Company
Unfortunately many web design agencies have jumped on the bandwagon and are offering SEO packages. The unfortunate part is that most do not have the knowledge or experience to generate real results that helps increase your profits. Listing your site on a few directories and posting a few blog comments linking back to your website is not enough and if there is any sort of competition in your market, you will not get the results you need.
Ask your prospective SEO company to demonstrate some results they have achieved and how they go about their SEO. You should not expect them to divulge all of their strategy as some of this remains a secret, to prevent competitors from blatantly copying their system. What you do want to hear is that keyword selection is important, backlinks (a hyperlink from one site back to yours) are built at an appropriate rate, from a diverse range of sites and from popular, well ranked sites. Then you know they at least have some of the core understandings of SEO but at the end of the day, it is the demonstrated results that matter the most.
Is SEO for You?
We love SEO as our preferred method of increasing the number of qualified visitors or ‘traffic’ to your website. Our results have proven that SEO delivers the best return on investment (ROI) of any online marketing promotion when targeting the right keywords. Achieving a top 3 ranking for a keyword (preferably number 1) will not only help more people to find your business, it also strengthens your perceived authority in your marketplace. It is not uncommon for people to think the number 1 site must be the best, so where do you want to be?
Find out how we increase website traffic and our expert Search Engine Optimisation Services
