Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization is probably the single most important marketing
technique that a website owner can do to increase visibility and visitors.
Greater visibility and highly targeted visitors improve salës, which
in turn, improves the bottom-line.
Numerous studies have proven just how important SEO is for online businesses:
50% of those who bought from online retail sites arrived via the search engines.
Between 85 and 90% of people use search engines to find websites they haven't
visited before.
The Financial Times reported August 2002, that every day over 340 million
web users rely on search engines to locate new businesses.
57% of Internet users search the web each day, making search the second most
popular Internet activity next to checking email (81%).
Studies have also proven that SEO has the best return on investmënt (ROI)
of any kind of advertising in terms of cost-per-acquisition (CPA). Savvy website
owners who realize just how fierce competition on the Internet is use SEO to
position their business ahead of their competitors. If you are not incorporating
SEO as part of a website marketing/promotion strategy you are losing out, because
your competition mostly likely is!
If done properly, the results from SEO are very impressive. One of our long
time clients in the printing industry has been operating the same site for
almost five years. Instead of rebuilding their website which has a very simple
design, they decided to perform SEO. That same site today delivers so much
business that SEO is the only kind of salës and marketing they use (both
online and offline). Another client currently does as much business in one
day as it used to in seven. And this client originally wanted to rebuild their
site first. And to this day, the site is still the same except for some minor
regular updates. In the past, the client did a lot of print advertising, but
because of great SEO results, they have cut their advertising costs in half
and achieved salës growth of 700%! For more great examples, read the case
studies on the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) website.
Rebuilding a Website
Rebuilding a site makes it look nice, provides fresh content, and sometimes
improves navigation. Will any of these lead to increased visitors? Most likely
not. Making aesthetic changes does very little to increase a website's visibility
on the Internet.
It is estimated that 56% of ALL websites are "lost in cyberspace"!
What is the point of spending monëy on rebuilding a site if no one ever
sees it? It would be a complete waste of time, monëy, and effort - all
of which translate into a very poor ROI.
Your website is competing with over 3 billion (at last count) other pages
on the Internet. It will be "lost" by not having it visible to the
search engines - akin to putting up a flashing billboard on a deserted island!
It can be the greatest billboard ever designed, but because of its isolated
location very few people will see or read it, and thus, it will be a poor source
of revenue generation.
The fact is, there are lots of great websites on the Internet. So what? What's
the use of having a great website if no one knows about it or can find it?
And even if people do know about it, you are still not reaching the largest
Internet demographic: the 85 to 90% of ALL Internet users who find what they
are looking for by conducting searches on search engines!
The top-4 search engines are Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL. How do they compare
in terms of traffïc? The info below shows the top 5 results of the Top-50
Internet Property Rankings for October 2003 (ComScore Media Metrix, Nov. 2003).
Keep in mind that the table shows total number of unique visitors, not total
number of searches. So while MSN is tops in terms of traffïc, Google is
still the king of search.
Rank Property Unique Visitors (in thousands)
1 MSN-Microsoft sites 109,334
2 Yahoo! sites 108,673
3 AOL Time Warner Network 108,394
4 eBay 62,454
5 Google sites 58,209
The point of the table is that four out of the top five most-visited sites
are search related sites. SEO is your mechanism for becoming visible to this
group. SEO is critical to the success of your online venture. Rebuilding is
also important, but it can wait.
Your website should be an asset, not an expense. It should be generating you
income or leads, or providing useful information about your company. If it
isn't, then why have it?
In the US, 13% of traffïc to a website comes from search engines, up
from 8% for the previous year. International figures were even more striking
with some countries having search engine referral rates as high as 21%! SEO
makes your site search engine friendly. Rebuilding it may or may not, depending
on how skilled in SEO your webmaster is. There's far, far more to SEO than
just inserting META tags (title, description, keyword tag).
SEO First, Rebuild Second
It really is a much wiser choice to perform SEO first. Later, if the results
indicate the need to make improvements, then proceed with rebuilding your
website. Involve your SEO in the rebuilding process - their input/ advice
will be invaluable!
About The Author
Chris Genge is the President of 1st on the List Promotion Inc, a website promotion
firm that specializes in pay-per-click management and search engine optimization.
Chris writes on current and emerging search engine marketing theories and has
been involved in the SEO industry since its very early days. Since 1997, he
has focused on researching and implementing the most effective search engine
optimization techniques. Learn more at 1stonthelist.ca.
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