Search Engine Optimization
Save Money Or Make Money – Getting A Pro To Handle Your Search Engine Marketing
Anyone who has a website will know that there are certain monetary outgoings involved with having one. At the very least there is the domain name and hosting to shell out for, even if you decide to create the design yourself.
But what about promoting that website? One of the best ways of finding new customers is to attract their attention via the search engine listings. This can be done in two ways – you can optimize your site to make sure it is more likely to be revealed higher up in the results. Or you can pay to make sure that a link to your website appears in the sponsored links at the side of the results page.
Ideally both of these are good methods for getting the results you are after. Many website owners balance the two to get the best results. But many companies and individuals actually decide to take on this task themselves – in order to save money.
Is this the right solution? It is tempting, since the appearance of a website in the organic search results does not require any cost at all if you do the search engine optimisation yourself. And even the paid-for inclusion in search results only involves the cost of each click – you aren’t paying anyone else to achieve that aim for you. And it is even more tempting for those businesses that are on a strict budget. But what is more important – getting reasonable results on your own, or investing in outstanding results?
The Race To Get To The Top Of Google’s Listings
Most webmasters know that faring well on the search engines is crucial if you are going to get your share of the customers. But do you really need to be on page one?
Google is probably the most well known search engine online, and websites are constantly jostling for position to get that number one spot on the first page. There’s no doubt that being on page two or three is going to be better than being on page two hundred, but is it enough to grab some sales?
Google is split into two basic groups. Firstly there are the organic search results, which are achieved with good old fashioned hard work in the search engine optimization department. And secondly there are the search results that you can pay to appear in. Both of these are equally competitive, but there is an essential difference. You could say the first method is competitive in terms of knowledge, whereas the second is competitive more in terms of money. The biggest budget generally gets the top keywords. Although of course, you need to know which keywords to bid on in the first place.
They say hard work reaps rewards and this is certainly the case when you are trying to get to the top of the listings. Being on the first page of Google will get you better results than being on page two. But if you can get in one of the top five positions the results will be better still.
The problem though is that it’s not just a case of getting there. Inexperienced webmasters will sit back and celebrate at reaching that coveted number one spot. And very soon after they will find they have slipped back down again.
The Penalties Of No SEO
There are websites in existence today on virtually every single angle of every single subject you could think of. But not all of them understand the benefits offered by SEO.
Search engine optimization can get you found more readily on all search engines to a huge customer-base. It’s the equivalent of sticking a flag in your website (or perhaps a number of flags) and saying, ‘Hey! Here I am! Come and see me!’
Without those flags you are, by default, making it a lot harder for the search engine spiders to find and index your site. It will probably still happen, and you will get ranked somewhere in those listings, but it won’t be in a particularly great position.
Unfortunately some people still find search engine optimization to be a mystery. Admittedly it can seem like a minefield if you aren’t used to it. There are some things you absolutely should do, and some things that you should steer well clear of. There is black hat SEO and white hat SEO – and then there are all the ‘grey hat’ methods in between. How do you know what methods to use?
But in the end it is all about educating yourself. The worst thing you can possibly do is to think that all this SEO is really not that important after all. If you take that point of view your website will suffer as a result.
Knowing Where Your Visitors Come From
How do you drive traffic to your website? If you are anything like the majority of people you will probably use a variety of methods to generate traffic, such as classified ads, pay per click marketing, search engine optimisation and so on.
But do you actually know how many visitors you are getting from each source? If you don’t you may well be wasting time on methods that just aren’t working for you – and that means you aren’t using your time in the best possible way.
One of the most important things you can do to build up a good stream of traffic to your website is to continually look for new ways to promote it. This is particularly applicable if you have a new site and you want to get it out there and start making some sales.
Let’s look at an example of how this works. In week one you decide to optimise your site for the search engines, and you also place two classified ads that link back to your site. That makes a good start. Then in week two you decide to write three articles to submit to various article directories that will also drive traffic back to your site.
Is The Internet Getting Too Crowded?
Years ago there were far fewer websites than there are today. With every day that goes by, more and more websites hit the internet for the first time, offering information, advice, products and services in the hope that they can make a decent living for the person who created and runs each one.
But how does this explosion of websites and web pages affect the people who use the internet every day – whether they use it as a means to make money, a means to find and buy items for all kinds of occasions, or simply as a way of finding information?
As far as making money is concerned, there is no doubt that the people who are relying on their website to make them some cash need to be focused on having the best website design possible to make them stand out from their competition. The days when an average looking website would still rake in lots of sales are long since consigned to the past; nowadays you need to keep up and constantly check and double check your website and its ability to pull in the customers and encourage them to spend money if you really want to make an impression online.
But of course all this competition has meant a great opportunity for the people who are surfing the internet with money to spend. Despite the current hard times that are affecting several countries around the world there is no question that people are still out there shopping, and in fact they are more likely to be looking online because the prices tend to be cheaper there due to the lower overheads.
Why Information Is Still King
Ask any webmaster what the most important part of a website is and the vast majority will tell you it’s the content. And quite rightly too, since good website promotion relies on having good content to draw people in.
Some people point to the importance of good website design as well, and it’s certainly true that the design of a website is hugely important. For example, if you were in the market to buy an iPod or other expensive gadget online, you wouldn’t look for it on a site that had a basic and cheap looking design. You’d go to a website that looked the part.
There is certainly an important role that designers have to play in the web of the 21st century, and there is no doubt that good design has led to the success of many a website in the past. But content – and more properly information – has the biggest role to play, because it has the power to attract the search engines and the customers, and that leads to big sales in the future.
But some webmasters still don’t think there is a difference between content and information. In truth there shouldn’t be, but there is. Content fills web pages and takes up space, but there is no guarantee that it will be worth reading. Some of it merely focuses on search engine optimization rather than actually providing anything of note to visitors.
Why SEO Is So Important
SEO – or search engine optimization – is crucial to the success of any website. While businesses can rely on Google Adwords or other similar schemes to rank highly in the search engine results, they need to have a reasonable budget in order to make this a reality, and the fact is that many smaller businesses simply cannot afford to do this kind of advertising, even though it can be very cost effective.
When that is the case, these websites clearly need to find another way to rank highly in the results – otherwise they aren’t going to be getting the bulk of the visitors coming to their site.
This is why SEO is so important, because it can literally make or break a website. Unfortunately many people create their own websites and they get so involved in the design and function of the site (which are admittedly equally as important) they forget that they also need to be able to attract the search engine spiders that will get them ranked in the top few results.