Getting Found On The Internet | SEO isn't a one-time fix any more
If a web site is created and no one comes to visit, does that web site even exist?
In today’s Internet society web traffic is a must-have. No longer can businesses rely on “newsletter-like” sites that stay static and attract little to no visitors from day-to-day.
But how’s a small- or medium-sized business with few resources for marketing supposed to get their traffic up? And why should they care?
Search Problem
I recently spoke with a couple of experts at Wakefly, a Westborough-based web development and online marketing firm, about the issue of search engine optimization and attracting web visitors. Wakefly got its start back in 2002 and has recently moved from basic programming of web sites to the growing industry of online marketing, including search engine optimization.
And if you ask Wakefly’s founder Dean Dorazio, the days of plain vanilla sites have long passed.
“Before it was enough to make a pretty web site and people would eventually just find it,” he said. “But today, the market is so cluttered, a business has to make sure they’re found amongst all their competitors.”
First, before we go much farther, I should probably define search engine optimization, or SEO. SEO includes steps, some simple, some more complicated, that will help a web site “get found” through search engines, like Google.
I kind of think of SEO in terms of the old-fashioned Yellow Pages. We’ve all seen businesses that used the trick of starting their name with the letter A to be listed first in an alphabetical directory (like A1 Transportation or A Plus Cleaners). Taking steps to improve your site’s SEO is kind of like naming your company with the Yellow Pages in mind.
A simple way to test your business’s search results is to type the business name into Google and see where the homepage shows up on the list of results. It should be number one. If it’s not, you should talk about SEO with your web developer.
Of course, it’s important to remember that most customers aren’t going to find your site by simply typing your legal name into a search engine. They’ll be typing in keywords related to whatever problem they’re trying to solve. For example, if I’m a small business owner with a tax question, I’d probably type “Worcester accountant” into Google to look for potential firms.
To increase the likelihood that you show up near the top of search engine results, Wakefly’s Jeff Demers, director of search marketing, makes a couple of recommendations. The first is to identify the terms and phrases that your prospects are searching for.
“You want to select terms that you can actually compete on and you want to select terms that are focused enough,” Demers said. In other words, if you run a law firm that focuses on elder law, your prospects will likely use the phrase “elder law” during their Internet searching.
Once you’ve figured out those key phrases, you can have your web developer build them into strategic places in your site, which should help you climb up the search results. Those strategic places are often buried in the HTML, or programming language of the site.
Demers' second recommendation is to make sure your business is registered with Google’s Local Business Center, Yahoo Local and Bing Local. You can create a listing in these directories for free, which can only help more customers find your site.
One of the common misconceptions that Demers said he runs into is the idea that SEO is a one-time job. That, unfortunately, is not the case, because search engines are constantly changing how they compile their results. So a business that’s ranked number one today can be number 10 next month.
“People think there’s a start and there’s a finish with SEO,” Demers said. “But there really isn’t ever a finish. As more competitors come online, you have to continue to evolve your strategies.”
Got news for our Digital Diva column? E-mail Christina H. Davis at cdavis@wbjournal.com.
WBJ Web Partners
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