It is all very well having a nicely designed and appealing website for your business, but it is of no use if you do not get customers to visit it. Number one word you will find linked to this is SEO. You will find endless sources on the internet tell you to optimize it and optimize it, but what does it all mean?
SEO simply m
eans making your website as friendly to search engines as possible. Search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN provide your company with the opportunity to reach a huge amount of customer, they are by far the most successful method to increase sales for your business. If your site is nicely optimized so you will have a greater chance of appearing higher up on search engines.
Most customers will type in a phrase into the search engine and see the first couple of websites that it believes will usually be successful in finding what they were looking for on the first page of results. Statistics show that customers rarely look beyond the first page (90% do not look past the first page), so what good is it if your site is on page 10? This is where SEO comes in, it will give your business a greater chance of becoming the first golden page in the search engines.
There are many methods that all contribute to a higher position, but some are more influential than others. The first factor is to have a well built website. This is a standard feature that all website design companies should offer.
The second method is keywords. Keywords are the words associated with your business idea is to include these words in your site, so when a customer types a phrase into a search engine, your website is more likely to show up. Keywords should be chosen carefully to target the right market for your business. It's no good targeting the word "fruit", if your business sells website design.
The third factor that contributes to a high search engine ranking is back links. It simply means a link from someone else's website to yours. The more links you have to your site the better. Search engines view your back links as a sign of popularity and of course the more popular you are more successful, you think.
One of the best methods for this is to submit your website to online directories, not only will you get a link back, but you are also likely to get a lot of customers coming to your site from this link. Make sure you select trusted directories and one who can relate to your business, there is a chance that you will be penalized by search engines, if you sign up to link farms (websites that collect lot's of spam and poor quality links).
Finally, a site that is constantly updated also gives you a boost in the form of search engines as they like to see new content. It is also likely to draw customers back to your site so they know they are likely to see something new. This will in turn increase the amount of traffic you get to your site, which will also help in getting a higher search engine ranking.
These are just some of the ways in which you can improve your website's performance, there are many factors that contribute to a high search engine ranking. Most are an ongoing process, so it is very beneficial for your business to continually try to improve your performance as there is always someone competing against you for that top spot.
