Sure, there are a handful in denial, but mostly people now accept the Internet is here to stay even if they choose to avoid using it wherever possible. In business the divide between bricks and mortar businesses and the .com companies is long gone, every business has an online strategy. The Internet has joined the ranks of the utilities.
The old ways of checking people out before doing business involved the library, personal recomendation or the ability to ready body language. These days, over 85% of new purchases or business relationships start by searching online. In the UK over 90% of those use the Google search engine. Not found, you might as well not exist, you won't get the job, you cannot be verified; your competitors who get found will win. Mistaken for another with a poor record and you are even worse off.
A website that does not search can only work for people you tell about it. That can do some good, if it is well presented and informative it may move a prospective customer to purchase, but it will do nothing to build your business prospects. For the first time in the history of business customers are searching out suppliers as energetically as suppliers are seeking customers. Astonishingly, many, indeed the majority in numerical terms, businesses do nothing to make themselves searchable, visible, prominent for the customers who are looking to find them. It is not cheap, in fact it will cost several times the price of building a good website, but it is possible to make any website easy to find from multiple simple key word searches. The techniques are collectively known as search engine optimisation or, in geek speak, SEO.
The purpose of SEO is to find a way of being ranked best according to the rules of the search engine for the key words used by the customer searching. That requires knowledge of how the search engine works and being better at it than your competition. Like most new services, the potential buyers know little about the techniques and the practitioners know only what they know. In fact, only the best most up-to-date practitioners get close to optimisation, most only improve; others make efforts that are totally ineffective. One thing is certain; price is no guide to an effective SEO service. The cost of really good SEO for a website is dependent on many of factors not least the number of competitors in the market for the website. There is a free downloadable guide by the author at www.timmeadows-smith.co.uk entitled 'finding a good SEO service'.
It is not just businesses that need to be found, we all do individually. Looking for a job, guess what, for salaried jobs through recruitment agencies over 85% of shortlisted candidates will be checked for their online presence. Done well it will boost your chances of being shortlisted and landing the job, done badly, and your off the list. Beware social network sites and 'friends' thinking it's funny to post something embarrassing on line. I know this because I use Google Alerts against my own name; recently, someone posted a YouTube video entitled 'Miss Meadows-Smith OTT Drunk' it shows a fairly typical but unedifying party scene. My own daughters and nieces, who share that name with the YouTube 'Star', are now at risk if a potential employer, as they reasonably might, were to check and assume it to be them. The answer to this kind of issue, apart from joining a monastery, is to get and promote a personal website such that there is plenty of searchable positive information about you to be found ahead of anything that might be damaging, yours or otherwise. For more information about the benefits of a personal website there is a free download by the author at www.timmeadows-smith.co.uk entitled 'control your online presence with a personal website'.
A website is like a beautifully decorated but unattended reception area. Visitors come take a good look and then go completely unnoticed. That should never happen. It is possible to give your website visitors a welcome that engages and the techniques for doing so will be the subject of an article to be published soon.
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Of the 300 million searches each day, more than 90% of Internet users search for what they want via search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Most of the visitors never go past the first or second page of search results. So if you’re not at or near the top, your bottom line suffers. For effective website optimization, you need an SEO specialist with proven expertise to drive traffic to your website, helping to convert traffic into sales.
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