Just like everyone else, you probably are wondering how to get your website noticed! If you are a small business with big expectations, you probably had a website built and expected the orders to just roll in. You may have already tried some Pay Per Click advertising and possible 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.
Being in the first group of results is what will bring traffic to your website. It doesn't matter what you have to offer, the key to success online is to be found on the first page of these search results when someone is looking for what you have to offer.
The great thing about those search results is that they are working twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred sixty five days a year. The down side is that if you cant be found in those results, your neighbor across the street could be looking for what you have to offer and youll never know.
Even if you have tons of traditional business experience, it is going to bu useless online. For instance, before the internet, businesses might have 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. However, only a few years later, most people don't 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.
A local sporting goods store owner who complained that he would typically get one of the high end shoes from his supplier and it would never sell until he discounted it at the end of the season. Where that same shoe would have customers lining up around the block in the big city, hoping to get a chance to buy that pair of shoes as soon as it was delivered.
By putting his inventory online, the small town store owner allows the people in the big city to find the items 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 doesn't 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.
Again, just having a cool website is not enough. You are going to need to build that website in a Search Friendly manner. Lets use the shoes one more time. Say you put a great picture of the latest shoe on your website. It is the very one that kids across the country would go get a job for. 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 searches through your site, following your linking structure. It then records 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.
What does this mean? The world has changed and is more advanced than it was 10 or even 5 years ago. It has changed in ways we could not ever predict. 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. But now you have to index your site in the way that can be found by the Search Engines, 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 the terms that someone would type in when they are looking for this exact product. This will more than likely take some 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.
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.
Being in the first group of results is what will bring traffic to your website. It doesn't matter what you have to offer, the key to success online is to be found on the first page of these search results when someone is looking for what you have to offer.
The great thing about those search results is that they are working twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred sixty five days a year. The down side is that if you cant be found in those results, your neighbor across the street could be looking for what you have to offer and youll never know.
Even if you have tons of traditional business experience, it is going to bu useless online. For instance, before the internet, businesses might have 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. However, only a few years later, most people don't 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.
A local sporting goods store owner who complained that he would typically get one of the high end shoes from his supplier and it would never sell until he discounted it at the end of the season. Where that same shoe would have customers lining up around the block in the big city, hoping to get a chance to buy that pair of shoes as soon as it was delivered.
By putting his inventory online, the small town store owner allows the people in the big city to find the items 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 doesn't 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.
Again, just having a cool website is not enough. You are going to need to build that website in a Search Friendly manner. Lets use the shoes one more time. Say you put a great picture of the latest shoe on your website. It is the very one that kids across the country would go get a job for. 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 searches through your site, following your linking structure. It then records 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.
What does this mean? The world has changed and is more advanced than it was 10 or even 5 years ago. It has changed in ways we could not ever predict. 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. But now you have to index your site in the way that can be found by the Search Engines, 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 the terms that someone would type in when they are looking for this exact product. This will more than likely take some 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.
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