A website that hasn’t been optimised for search engines is a bit like a brochure or a postcard. It might look really pretty and have all the functionality to be a real gamechanger for your business but it’s not really effective and may never be visited by anyone unless you do something with it and if you read on a bit, you’ll understand just why that is.
You’ll only get users to look at it if you hand it them directly (direct traffic – giving users URLs – often through traditional marketing such as posters, business cards or as the example of this post – a brochure), if you display it for free in a shop (social traffic – facebook posts / social media/referrals from other websites). Or pay someone to redistribute it in targeted areas where you think it might get results (Paid traffic – Google Adwords, Facebook).
So what’s the problem above for growth?
Direct traffic relies on users who already know your website/company which isn’t growing your business ( unless they choose to share )
Social traffic/referral traffic relies on other services to do the work for you for free. Which requires a large social media following (most of which is not going to see your website posts due to algorithms which throttle posts including URLs to companies outside of Facebook.
It should also be noted that social traffic and referral traffic is part of ‘off-site’ SEO and is still important to set up effectively but without on-site foundations, you’ll never grow in the search engines.
Paid traffic is effective when targeted right but is exactly what it says on the tin – paid traffic. You’re paying for users to look at your website in the hope they’ll follow your sales funnels or lead generation to make it worth the cost. Which if you don’t have an effective marketing and targeting plan in place combined with an effective funnel setup that’s been tried and tested is often a very quick way to lose cash.
On-site SEO will optimise your website for search engines and help consumers looking for products, services or queries about your industry in general, find your website before your competitors. Getting on the first page of Google is absolutely key to success for serious digital growth. SEO has the key advantage of getting free traffic to your website that is already interested in your services but hasn’t heard of you yet or might be a customer who has heard of you and based on your credibility in the search rankings – decides to make the purchase with you.
Best of all with SEO and digital marketing and the key advantage of it over traditional marketing methods is there is legitimate actionable data showing you the results as you do it, with analytics you can see which search terms users are finding your website with, how effective pages are at converting, resulting in data-driven decisions that can give you real results.
So how do I optimise my website for SEO?
Gone are the day of quick fixes for SEO like keyword spamming, Blackhat SEO techniques might still get some results quick but they’re also now a quick way of getting your website banned from googles listings. Users are wising up to shoddy methods also, websites with keyword spamming are often overlooked as websites written for user experience over machine tend to convert much better and show meta information that is actually useful to the user.
The real problem with SEO is if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can do more harm than good. Be wary of those promising results overnight as they are likely offering Black Hat SEO techniques – Google has even stated an effective SEO plan from an expert using white hat SEO will take between 4-12 months.
We have an effective post on SEO requirements for websites in 2018 but we recommend all websites have SEO as a key part of the initial design & development process. If your web designer hasn’t spent time explaining SEO or going over any search terms with you then buyer beware as you may be setting up to fail before you even begin.
Creative Wavelength provide extensive SEO onsite & off with all new websites and have a proven record of fast growth for websites in even the most niche of sectors. If you’re interested in a free quote or consultation for your new website then get in contact
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