A viable presence on the Internet today is far more than simply having a web site. Regardless of the market you’re in, you’ve got competition, and when potential customers or clients are out there searching in your industry, you want them to find you first.
How do they search?
People use search engines because they want to be given a range of choices for relatively broad criteria. Essentially, they want to put out a limited amount of information and hopefully reach an applicable destination.
Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)
The search terms that users enter are called "keywords" and depending on how relevant those keywords are to certain sites, the search engines will display links to those sites in order of preference.
Better Ranking equals More Users
- 62% of search engine users click on a result on the first page
- 41% will change their query if they don’t find what they want on the first page of results*
A recent study at Cornell University** investigated how users interact with the results from a Google search using eye-tracking. Their goal was to gain insight into how users browse and select links for further exploration.
Fig 1. Google SEPR Click and Attention distribution ‘heat-map’ (Image courtesy of SEO Researcher) The results (fig. 1) showed that the mean time that users spent fixated on a link, as well as the number of clicks, dropped off the further down the SERP they went. It’s no secret, the higher the link to your website appears in the SERPs, the more users will come to your site. The key to a better ranking in the SERPs is having your site optimised for those keywords. Search Engine Optimisation is more than just having these keywords appearing in the text of your site though, and it’s far more than "planting" these keywords around in your HTML code (which is what the Search Engines see when they browse your site). Search Engine Optimisation is about making your site relevant to the search being performed. Are you, in fact, what that user is looking for?
More Users does not necessarily equal More Business
Unfortunately, having more users on your site does not necessarily translate into more business for your company. When your site isn’t relevant to the search term used to get there, then you have Irrelevant Traffic, and your site needs optimised for Qualified Traffic. "Conversion Rates" and "Usability" are two of the more popular catch-phrases currently in the industry, but i’ll put it in simple terms:
If you aren’t what the user is looking for, then you won’t get their business.
Worse than that, if you ARE what they’re looking for but your site doesn’t help them get what they need - they leave.
Search Engine Optimisation Experts – More than just Keywords
I’m an expert in Search Engine Optimisation and started learning how to make Google happy back before SEO was a catchprase and saying "Google" out loud still made people give you a funny look.
A good SEO plan these days is basically a Business Plan for the Online Realm, encompassing not just a few keywords and their placement, but your websites entire presence on the web.
Contact me to find out more.
* Source: AH Digital FX Studios ** Source: Cornell University