First of all, if your small business already has a website, congratulations! You are way ahead of your competitors who don’t even have a website yet.
Who designed your website? Is it attractive, professional, informative, neat? Do you employ the latest “gimmicks” that customers expect to see, such as audio/video presentations showcasing your business, maps of your location, and a comprehensive description of your products and services?
Advances on the internet and changes in search engine optimization (called SEO for short) make it imperative that you update your existing website in order to rise to the top of the search engine results. When people search Google or Yahoo for your particular type of business, you want to be at the top of the results.
In years past, the websites that were at the top of search engines were large, had hundreds (or thousands) of pages, and were designed by expensive website designers.
Not anymore, today you can upgrade your small business website to include audio and video, you can import the latest news from your industry directly into the web page and get to the top of the search engines for a mere fraction of the cost before. .
What exactly is search engine optimization and why should you care?
Compare your way of thinking about the Internet with the yellow pages.
What do you do when you want to find a business (for example, a plumber) in the Yellow Pages? You go to that header, and then the results are sorted alphabetically within that header, right?
Well, when someone searches for a plumber on the internet, the results come back (just like the yellow pages) but the results are not arranged alphabetically. Instead, search engines display results based on their internal criteria. So your customer may never find your small business website on the internet, unless it is at the top of the search engines.
That’s why it’s critical that you have a website designed from the ground up with search engine optimization in mind. You must have a website that rises to the top of the search engines, or what’s the point?
