Since the introduction of the web in the late 90′s, it’s growth has been explosive with an impressive 25% of all people on the planet using it. Worldwide, Internet usage seems to have grown roughly 340% since the beginning of the millennium.
A fascinating 1.6 billion people all over the world use the Internet – in search for information and educational purpose. Since over $133 billion was spent online in America alone in 2008, it’s safe to say that many of these web surfers are looking for information in order to make a purchasing decision. In 2008 alone, more revenue was generated through online spending than larger international companies like IBM and Bank of America make!
Wouldn’t it be nice to get your hands on that $133 billion piece of pie? Then your business needs to find different ways of promoting your online presence and dozens of visitors to your website every day. If you’re currently thinking about paid advertisements like PPC or PPM, you might find that sales can’t keep up with costs – this leads to campaigns being shutdown and unfortunately websites shortly thereafter.
Small businesses that want to maximize their web presence realize that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a much better resource over pay-per-click advertising. They might now know that SEO better be more than just keyword research and metatag improvements. SEO should focus on getting the maximum exposure possible from many different Internet resources.
Usually a reputable SEO firm can identify these “outside” resources, and the goal is obviously to promote exposure and brand recognition for your website using a combination of the following:
Optimizing each page on your site. Many people don’t realize that websites don’t rank as a whole – each individual page actually ranks by itself in the search engines. Since you can leverage more than one page and not just the “home” page, incoming traffic can be increased significantly in the search engines.
Building back-links on other sites. When people come to your website through a link that is strategically placed on another site, this is called a bank-link. Back-links serve two purposes – they obviously bring in more traffic to your site directly from other websites, but they also allow your domain to rank higher in the search engine results. A good, ethical SEO firm will work diligently to provide bank-links, often through content, on other relevant websites.
Understanding the Competition: Your business will find hidden ways of driving more traffic to its site by understanding what keywords the competition is going after – often times you will find keywords with little competition that have high-relevancy and “buying” potential. You can easily rank for these keywords since your competition missed them!
Social Media. Leveraging the masses of social media (Myspace, Linkedin, etc) will allow for further expansion of the exposure your website should enjoy.
Detailed Reporting. No SEO program can be properly assessed without comprehensive and timely reporting of results.
Effective SEO companies should provide you with these tools that will further promote your business online and allow you to gain maximum exposure and awareness. Competition for sales is hard enough when times are good – and when the economy is shrinking, selecting an effective and economical SEO firm is an extremely important decision.
Indeed, the first quarter of 2009 indicated a slower rate of ecommerce sales for this year, but the pace is off only about five percent compared to the double-digit declines seen in total retail sales over the last year.
In today’s turbulent economy, such a modest decline puts the ecommerce world ahead of most businesses. And with a properly managed SEO strategy, your small business could very well avoid participating in the current recession altogether.
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