If you are thinking about SEO then you are thinking about how search engines work. That includes the algorithms that control search engine behaviour, what people search for and the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines.
The ultimate aim of SEO is to rank your site higher on the page for search terms that your customers might use.
Search Engine Optimisation is Not for Everybody
In this sense. That many sites are designed as ‘business card’ sites where the function is to be a first port of call for your customers. These are generally designed for customers who know you or have been recommended to you and know your name. Perhaps they’ve seen your van or they’ve heard about you in some other way. Good if you do local advertising to be able to point people at your website. Let them get to know you a bit before they pick up the phone.
Sites like this are a critical part of your business but do not necessarily need extensive SEO. As long as people who know your name or have got your website address can find you then you have all you need.
But It Can Work Really Well for Some
Where SEO can work well is where you want to attract new customers for existing services who may not have visited your site or heard of your business. The catch is that this is what everyone wants to do, and the more popular the business you are in, and the wider the geographic area in which you work, the harder it will be to get a good result.
For some search terms the top several entries on a results page will be paid for adverts. The market place can be very crowded. And we have to say that SEO can cost in the £100s each month if you really want to have an impact. For most of us that is not viable but this does not mean that there’s nothing to be done.
A Little Search Engine Optimisation can go a Long Way
What we can do is to control what Google says about you in Search Results. So we can control the headline and the bit of copy that follows that and we can do this for each page of your website. This means that when you are on the front page or if people have searched for you directly we are telling the story that you want to tell about what you do.
We can also optimise each page of your site for an appropriate Search term for that page. Sometimes this involves making some small changes to the page to really make it work for a particular Search term. In this way we improve your chances of being listed in results for the sort of searches that might benefit you. If you have an ecommerce site you can even do this for individual products.
Is There a Catch?
No. It’s about being realistic about where you website and your business stands in the market and what it’s possible to achieve. In many cases, apart from the basic SEO that I do across all sites you will be fine as you are. In other cases it will definitely be worth making the investment to make your site more visible in the way that’d you’d like it to be seen.
SEO is an additional service to your website build and can be a time consuming piece of work as well as needing additional software. No surprise then that it comes with additional costs.
Some of you have already added SEO to your support package and will be benefiting from additional organic visits to your sites as a result of that work.
That’s it for now
Whether you already include SEO in your package and would like to expand it, or if you’d like to consider adding it, please drop me a line and we can talk it through.
