SEO

What is SEO and do I need it?

The short answers: Search Engine Optimization and YES.

It is one thing to have a website for your business. It is another thing to make sure your website looks great and adheres to current web design trends. What is often overlooked by small businesses, however, is how people find your website in the first place. Existing customers may know how to find your website, but how do you draw in new customers?

If you are a large company, you have already built your brand and company recognition. These companies have the good fortune of the world knowing exactly what to type in to get to their website.

Local small businesses like yours do not have this luxury. Even if you have an “easy to remember” website, potential customers need to know exactly what web address to type in or they need to be able to find your website by typing a phrase or a few keywords into a search engine like Google, Bing, or Yahoo. Compounding the complexity of searching for your business online, is the fact that your business needs to show up on the first page of results (or at worst, the second page).  If your business isn’t in the top results, the customer will likely find (and go to) one of your competitors.

This is why Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is vital for your website. SEO is even more critical for small businesses than larger well-known companies. Your website needs to be optimized in order to beat (or at least complete with) the “big guys” at their own game.

Search engines can search the written content on your website, but another part of SEO is creating keywords and phrases about your business and coding them into your website. Keywords also need to be reflected in the written content of your site. These words are how you want people to find your business so you need to create a unified message and stick to it in all your marketing materials and strategies.

Another key component of SEO is in reference to the pictures included on your website. Customers don’t want to come to your site to “read a novel.” You need to find the right balance of words and pictures to complement each other. We are all familiar with the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words.” While this is true for your website, search engines cannot read your pictures. SEO also involves creating tags for your pictures so search engines know what the picture is. Whether your picture is for a product or service, search engines need to know what it is by the tag or it will be ignored entirely.

Yes, you need to have a website. Yes, you need to make sure it looks great. Yes, it needs to be mobile friendly (dynamic). All of this for nothing, however, if the customer can’t find your website in the first place.

When you are creating or updating your website, make sure SEO is included. Alphomega Marketing will create your website and work with you to create the messaging that will guide the SEO process.