The Importance of an Effective SEO Strategy
Since the introduction of the web in the late 90′s, it’s growth has been explosive with an impressive 25% of all people on the planet using it. Worldwide, Internet usage seems to have grown roughly 340% since the beginning of the millennium.
So what does all of this mean? It means that nearly 1.6 billion people worldwide are surfing the web today, and a fair number of them are likely to be using the Internet to research products and ultimately, to buy them. Records show that in 2008, over $133 billion dollars were spent in America buying products online. Thats more revenue than international stalwarts like AT&T, IBM, or Bank of America were able to generate last year.
In order for your small business to get a piece of this $130 billion pie, you need to find different ways of promoting your website online and bringing hundreds of qualified visitors to it on a daily basis. If you’re looking into paid advertising like pay-per-click (PPC), watch out – these campaigns could get extremely expensive and often times lead to campaigns shutting down right with the businesses that spend the money to run them!
Often times small business owners will turn to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to maximize their online exposure and brand recognition. They realize that in the long-run, it’s much more cost-effective than pay-per-click. What these business owners may not know is that SEO is far more complicated than the old ways of just tweaking a website and hoping the search engines improve the rankings. SEO in today’s day and age needs to remain focused on not only that, but also getting the best possible exposure and recognition through other Internet-based resources located “outside” the website itself.
These resources can be identified by a reputable and ethical SEO firm, and the goal will be to increase exposure and visibility for your website using a combination of:
Optimization of individual website pages. By avoiding the inclination to focus SEO efforts on the site at large, traffic can be exponentially improved through finding doorways that allow individual pages to rank high within search engines.
Building back-links. When visitors come to your site by way of another link placed on a different web page, this not only increases your traffic but also helps your website rank higher in the search engines. An ethical SEO firm will work hard to secure back-link opportunities in a professional and organic way.
Competition Analysis: A thorough understanding of keywords used by your competition is essential to uncovering hidden opportunities to drive traffic your way.
Social Media. Leveraging the masses of social media (Myspace, Linkedin, etc) will allow for further expansion of the exposure your website should enjoy.
Monthly Reporting. Comprehensive and timely reports are crucial to a good SEO campaign – without them you have no idea how far your site has come along!
These are just some examples of the tools that comprehensive SEO companies will use to further promote your online exposure and brand awareness. Whether you are selling a product or service, sales can be tough even in good times – make sure you choose an effective and ethical SEO firm to promote your business online.
Thus far, in 2009, the pace for ecommerce (compared to 2008) is only off by about 5% – this is nothing compared to the double-digit decline of retail sales in the last 365 days!
In todays turbulent economic conditions, such a modest decline puts the ecommerce world ahead of most businesses. And with a properly managed SEO strategy, your small business could very well avoid participating in the current recession altogether.