So you build a website in order to grow your business and expand your customer/client base. The question is how are people finding your business online? Being well positioned organically on major search engines, namely Google, Bing and Yahoo, takes more than just throwing yourself into the pool.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial in making sure that your website is built on a strong foundation so that it can be crawled easily, effectively and often by the search engines. Here are some reasons why this is important.
- If your website is not rich with relevant content, there’s nothing for the search engines to pick up on. When building pages for your website, you have to be mindful of your customers and how they will be searching for you online. Writing copy for your pages rich with relevant industry keywords is necessary not only to inform your customers once they reach your site, but in showing the search engines which search queries you need to rank for.
- You need to know both what the search engines are looking for and what penalizes a website in order to be successful. The concept of SEO is ever-changing and not an exact science, but there are definitive “Do’s and Don’ts” that any website needs to follow in order to rank well organically on the search results page. An experienced SEO partner can get you on this right track.
- It can take some time to see the effects of your work. In turn, it can also take some time to realize that what you’ve been working hard on has not benefited your website or possibly hurt it. This is why starting off your website build or any major overhauls being SEO-focused is key. Putting your best foot forward using the latest industry knowledge can help save time and money and help to ensure that the hard work you put in to your website reaps rewards.
- SEO should be part of your long-term strategy, not your temporary goals. Just as your business is always changing, so should your website. Refreshing your on-page content, building new functionalities and monitoring SEO tools and analytics is a constant requirement of any successful website.
- Mobile traffic is quickly overcoming desktop/tablet traffic. Just as it is important to understand your customer base from a local or national standpoint depending on your business goals, it is extremely important to be mindful of how your customers are viewing you on mobile devices. Adaptive or responsive design? Should you build a separate mobile website or design your site to be mobile-friendly? These types of questions will lead you down the path towards making your mobile experience a positive and profitable one and should be considered early in your web design process.
There are many other reasons to keep up on your SEO efforts. Don't let it overwhelm you. Simply find yourself a partner that has subject matter expertise. I can think of one!
