Having a website in today’s digital market is essential for having customers discover your business or service online.

A website is often the cornerstone that customers use before they make a buying decision or ask for more information. More often than not, a potential customer will decide whether to use a business solely by their perception of your website.

But does it really matter if someone can’t find my site organically?

Absolutely! A website becomes insignificant if it is not optimized for high rankings on a search engine results page. Most people won’t bother to extend their searching to the 2nd or 3rd page on Google.  All websites should be built with highly relevant keyword content and engage in using search engine optimization best practices.  There is no doubt that where a website is placed on a search engine results page will determine how many visitors come to your site.

There is a big difference between SEM (paid search results) like Google Adwords and SEO or Search Engine Optimization which means placement on the search engine results page was not paid for. All search engines read a website and decide where to rank it depending on a range of things including the structure of content on a website. The 3 most important factors that must be optimized in order to rank well on a search results page are;

Front-end SEO – the content that web visitors can see when they visit a website

• This involves keyword rich content for a business’ goods and service
• Consistent headings and page information that corresponds to the page titles

Back-end SEO – the development of the code when a website was built

• Keyword rich page titles
• Image names with keywords
• Descriptions of pages while being indexed by search engines (meta descriptions, Meta titles)
• Overall page correspondence within the code.

Off-page SEO- A new bridge is created by every post, link, or message that leads back to a website.

• Social media posts
• Blog posts
• News articles where the business appears
• Press releases
• Other links that may lead back to the website

Off-page SEO is the most important factor of the three. Google has created an environment where you can no longer overload a websites content with keyword after keyword.  A website that is supported by great SEO produces content multiple times in a week.

Producing high-quality content that is both interesting engaging and relevant and is pushed through several channels (social media, other blogs, etc..) has become essential in boosting your search rankings.

All 3 factors need to work together to ensure a websites SEO is performing to optimal standards. The better the front-end and back-end SEO the better a website will perform on search engine results pages. Inbound links to a website are also very important as there is more opportunity for a potential customer to find you outside of using a search engine.

Having a site that is search engine optimized is just as if not more important than even having a website itself. The better a website is optimized the more traffic you will receive to your site.

Good luck and give us a call if you need some help!