Eighty percent of all buyers online begin their shopping experience with a search engine. They search for their product using Google or Yahoo and gather as much information as they can before they make a purchase. They read blogs and mission statements, they watch videos and read the “About us” page on website and digest the information they have found so that they are informed buyers when the finally decide to make a purchase. Most searchers as a bit lazy, to be honest, though and search results on the 50th page of hits almost never get looked at.
Your goal as a business owner should be to optimize your website’s content so that it appears in the first page of search results. Most searchers (about 80%) never make it past page three of a search result list. About half of all searchers never make it past page one, so having your business’ website come up on the first page of search results is of paramount importance to increasing web traffic and gaining potential buyers. The higher you rank on a results page the more people you will have visiting your site through a regular search.
Once a website is created a “Google bot” will visit the site and Cache it into Google’s database. Other search engines operate under the same principle. Once the site is cached it will officially be returned in search results, but where it will show up makes all the difference in the world. Before you ever launch your site you need to do a bit of research and find out where the “openings” are in search engines. For example; if you are planning a craft business out of your home in Long Branch, NJ you will want to search the web for keywords that would pertain to your business. “Crafts + Long, Branch, NJ” would be a good search term as would “custom (insert product name here)”. If your searches return few results you have an opening that you could potentially exploit. To exploit it you want to use those terms throughout your website so you rank high on the results list.
In order to make it to the first page of Google or Yahoo your website will need to be optimized for search engines. Quality content that is dense in keywords and is adept at keyword proximity will have an easier time making it to the top search listing. Keyword density refers to the number of times typed keywords appear in a web page. It is generally believed that the more times a keyword appears in a web page the higher the ranking will be. While the sentiment is true, in theory, keyword proximity is important as well. For example a string of keywords together will appear higher in a search result than if the keywords are strewn about the page. Personally a mix of density and proximity works best. Two tactics are always better than one.
While a great looking website is important to your business’ success it won’t matter if people are not getting to the website so making sure your website is optimized is as important as creating the website itself.
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