Of all 3 factors though, the most vital for you to grow your business online is to make your website "search engine friendly" - and that all starts with search engine optimization or "SEO" for short.
Not familiar with SEO? The fact is, most of us have no idea how major search engines figure out exactly which websites rank well at the top and which are completely ignored. If you're not familiar with how it all works, it's not just you!
To put it briefly, search engine optimization or SEO is the art and science of making your website as quick to locate by the search engines as possible. And when you make it easier for the search engines to find you...of course your potential clients can find you also.
SEO is certainly THE most important factor with regards to creating a beneficial and successful online presence because without this, it doesn't matter how cool your site or how earth-shatteringly incredible your service or product is, if no one can find you in Google, then it's all for nothing.
So How Does SEO Actually Work?
Well let's say you're a dentist in San Mateo, California and you want to increase your business. As a dentist, potential clients searching for the services you provide may key in such words as "san francisco dentist" or any other such terms into major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.
In an ideal world, your website will show up on the 1st place ranking in Google for each of those "keywords" that the potential customer has typed in. If your website shows up on the first page of the Google search engine, your potential customers will be more likely to find you and find out about your dental services:
But if your business website isn't listed on the first page of search engine results, then potential clients are going elsewhere for their dental services. As a result, they're going to have a very difficult time searching your site and learning with regards to what you do. The fact is, the previous time YOU did some research on Google for anything, when did you ever look at the second page of search engine results? If you are like many individuals, probably very infrequently, if at all.
The objective then, is to get your website onto the first page of Google. That’s where all the traffic and money is because very few people search deeper than page one.
Furthermore, the higher your business website appears on page 1 the better. Additionally, it's been shown that for people that are in search of local business services online, 61% of them make a buying decision on that search!
Now more than ever, it's vitally important for businesses to have excellent publicity on the search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo.
The search engines, which includes Google look at both factors to find out which website they will "serve up" when someone enters a keyword like "san francisco dentist", "toothache", "beanie baby" or "how to lose weight". Every time a person type in any of these keywords to the search box, the search engine (and Google is best at this right now) combs the web in a millionth of a second to serve up the web page or website they consider is most relevant and authoritative for your search. This shows how you get to the top of the search engine results.
When you put together "relevance" with "authority", you've got a magical formula for success with having your website and your own individual web pages to the first page of Google and the other search engines.
Find out more about small business on page seo fundamentals, as well as small business on page search engine optimization by checking out our website.
