Doing Business with SEO
Wondering how to get your website seen? If you are a small business with big plans you probably had a website built and expected the orders to roll in. You may have already tried some Pay Per Click advertising and even paid to be listed in some online directories.
Hopefully you have figured out that people shopping online dont go through a directory to find you. They go to a Search Engine, like Google, Yahoo and MSN Live. They type in a keyword or phrase describing what they want and the Search Engine gives them a list of websites, starting with what the Search Engine believes are the most relevant results.
It is these results, rather being found in the first group of them that drives traffic to your website. No matter what you have to offer, when someone is looking for what you have to offer, the key to success online is to be found on the first page of these search results.
Those search engines are working 24-7-365 to find results for what people are searching. However, if you cant be found in the first few of those results, your neighbor could be looking for what you have to offer and youll never know.
If you have tons of traditional business experience the things you have used in the past to promote your store are going to be pretty much useless online. For instance, before the internet, it was not unusual for a business to spend thousands dollars per month on Yellow page advertising. When the internet first went public that business had to be sure that those ads pointed to their website. Now after only a few years, most households dont even know where their phone book is anymore.
If you have a traditional store, you may have a few different selections for a specific item. In your store you may display these specific items according to cost. The typical online shopper is not looking for every specific item you have to offer. They are searching for one specific brand and style at every store that offers that item.
In a small town, a local store owner is probably complaining that he has a specific item that he bought from his supplier, and that it will not sell until he discounts it at the end of the season. However, this same item is being sold in the big city and has customers lining up around the block hoping to get a chance to buy this specific item as soon as it is delivered.
When the local store owner decides to put his inventory online, it allows the kids in the big city to find the item they want regardless of what small town store has them! It takes a bit to wrap your head around the concept, but the online shopper is going to be more specific about what they are looking for and they dont really care where your store actually is as long as you can get the product they want delivered to them.
If you are a traditional store that wants to sell your products online, it is going to be vital to your success to offer your products from the top down rather than trying to use your website to sell the stuff you could not move in your store. The structure of your website has to break down products and categories and present those images in an appealing way. A good SEO will be able to research the products you have to offer that match up with the hottest searches performed and help you to target your campaign.
Although it is nice, only having a cool website is not enough. Your website must be built in a search friendly way. Let’s say that you put a great picture of a specific item on your website. It is the hottest item going and everyone wants it. But if all you have is a picture, the Search Spider cant read your picture. It is not human. It searches for text. Text in the form of Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) and in the form of content on your page. These are spider food.
The Search Spider goes through your site, following your linking structure, recording what it finds and takes it back to the Search Engine Database. The Search Engine runs that data through its algorithm to determine what searches your data might be relevant to and how relevant your data is compared to other websites it has recorded. Confused?
Whats it all mean? The world has changed. Changed in ways we could not even imagine. If we had computers in the eighteen hundreds, they would have predicted that every city in America would now be twenty feet deep in horse manure.
Your website is proof that you are trying to be a player in the new way of doing business. Now your site has to be indexed in a way that Search Engines will find it and your products can be identified and produced as relevant when a search is done.
Rather than showing a picture of your product and writing a caption under it that says something like This is a very popular item this year, use specific terms that someone would search for when they are looking for this exact product. This will take a little more effort and refining but diligence and persistence pay off.
The other thing that you must understand is that it takes time and patience. The Search Spider does not live only on your website. It also has to check up on everyone elses website. You will have to allow it time to get around to checking out your changes.
Dont be afraid to do some investigative work on your own. Check out your competition. See how they describe the products on their site. A little homework on your part will also help you get an understanding of what youre up against.
If you are using Pay Per Click advertising they will provide Keyword Suggestion Tools. But please use caution. These tools are really focusing on getting you to pay to show up in as many searches as they can. Although that might sound like exactly what you want too, the truth is that aside from being expensive, if your site does not exactly match to what the searcher is looking for, you are wasting money.
A Search Optimization Service will be help you focus your energy and resources in the areas that will get you more conversions because you will be showing up for the most relevant searches all the time rather than just when you can afford Pay Per Click advertising.