Seriously – why do you have a website?

Depending on your business it might be to get more enquiries, to get more sales or just to get your brand name out there.

If all you did was have a website built you are probably saying right now – ‘well that was a waste of money’, because you’ve had nothing from it – no enquiries, no sales, and when you ask no one has seen your website (except maybe some telesales person who called to sell YOU something).

I hear it all the time. ‘My website was a waste money,’ but when I ask ‘what have you done to promote your site’, I get a whole range of answers – all of them naïve excuses for not getting the basics done on SEO. I’ll explain myself in a minute.

It’s a bit like someone buying 10,000 full colour, double-sided, glossy leaflets and then putting them in a shed by the side of the road with a sign saying ‘Help Yourself’. You might get some business but not much.

But it’s not your fault.

They Told Me SEO Was Dead

I’ve heard so many people tell me that their ‘web guy’ told them that their site will ‘need time to rank’ or that they have done the SEO for the site, or, my favourite ‘SEO is dead’ – Aye Right!

Whatever your business is, I’m willing to bet that it is not marketing websites and it will almost certainly not be local SEO specialism.

SEO – Search Engine Optimisation, remember that.

Getting your website built and published onto the internet is only step one.

The next – and most important step, is to get people to go to it; people who haven’t heard of you before but have a need for what it is you are offering or to remind people who have used you to come back and not try out a competitor. To do that you need to get it found by those people.

How do you use the internet?

It’s a serious question. Most people use the internet initially for research so they type in a question or a statement. You are probably just like everyone else.

Let’s try a wee example. You are a window cleaner in Dennistoun.

Let’s say I live in a tenement building in Dennistoun, Glasgow and I am looking for a window cleaner or I live in Blackpool and I am looking for web design Blackpool.

I’ll probably go onto google (other search engines are available) and type in ‘Window Cleaners, Dennistoun’ or  ‘Window Cleaners who do Tenements’ and hit <return>.

What happens next is where Search Engine Optimisation really matters. In simple terms, the search engine goes off to find sites that have the best match to those phrases or terms in them. So far so good and just as you would expect, but maybe what it does next will surprise you.

Your Search Engine will come back with all the websites it has found in a huge long list broken down into pages. The search engine now needs to make a decision about the order in which it will display them to you. Relevance to your search term is a factor but so too is how much it likes your site. If the search engine doesn’t rate a site much, it will show it way down the list.

(Of course, the top spots will be reserved for those who have paid to be there (it is a business after all), but those positions can be costly.)

So what do Search Engines like?

Search Engines like sites that have been OPTIMISED – yeah, I know you saw that coming – but it’s true. The search engines have their own criteria for what they consider to be ‘good’ sites and so you need to make sure your site has been optimised. We call this technical SEO. Your ‘web guy’  probably told you they did all the technical SEO for your site and is probably a brilliant web guy – I hope so – but I doubt they will be a brilliant SEO guy.

Imagine if you were a window cleaner in Dennistoun and the search engines pushed you on to page three for the term ‘Window Cleaners in Dennistoun’ – you’d be raging.

So get your website checked out for  ‘technical SEO’ – there are plenty of SEO companies that will offer one for free. We do – just click here to find out more. It could make a huge difference to your business.

Of course, there could be another reason why your window cleaning website turned up on page three. Maybe your site doesn’t mention Dennistoun, maybe your site says, you are a Window Cleaner who covers the East End of Glasgow, or worse, it only mentions you cover Glasgow. Think how many other sites you are competing with there.

This is where my expertise in LOCAL SEO really comes into play. You see, I specialise in finding the terms that people use locally, most frequently and with 15 years experience, I have a lot of knowledge and skill to ensure that the search engines rank you prominently for those terms. More business and less cost.

I hope this wee article helped you understand a wee bit more about SEO and why your website may be underperforming. If you would like to find out how SEO can benefit your business, contact Mark Slorance SEO today.