So you’ve got a website. Everyone says that, in this day and age, businesses need to be online. Your customers may walk in off the street or be recommended by friends, but how did those friends hear about you in the first place?
Word of mouth isn’t what it used to be. It’s still there, but it works rather differently. You see, these days, there’s no mouth involved in word of mouth. It’s all done on social media, and that’s why it’s so important to be online.
Old-Style SEO
SEO always used to be about links from other websites and keywords on your own site. Things have moved on in leaps and bounds since then, particularly as people managed to cheat the search engine bots. However, as Forbes points out, keywords are still a pretty good starting place.
Blogging
Keywords can’t naturally occur and be considered by search bots unless your site is regularly updated. The best way to ensure your site regularly publishes relevant, keyword-rich content is to blog. Writing about your area of expertise will naturally provide texts that contain the relevant keywords. Checking over your blog posts after writing to make sure they are relevant and search-engine-friendly is, of course, important.
As the Huffington Post points out, blogging is just as important for maintaining a good relationship with your customers as it is for your SEO. After all, if you provide content that is genuinely interesting and useful, your customers will want to share it.
The more they share it, the more people will see it. For each of them who shares it, hundreds, if not thousands, more people will see your content. A percentage of those will click through to your website. If they like what you see, they might be your customers of the future.
You Can Judge a Book By Its Cover
In the internet era, you can’t overstate the importance of a website that looks good. A site designed by professionals such as Route22 Caterham web designers, who are the go-to people for Caterham web design, will naturally tick all the boxes when it comes to search engine optimisation and customer experience. Because whilst SEO is important, it’s not the be-all and end-all.
You need to remember that SEO is designed to drive real people to your website. Once they’re there, you need those people to love your site. This is what makes them stay, share it and ultimately become customers.
So, the final piece of advice has to be to work hard on your SEO and, by all means, use it to your advantage. But don’t forget it’s not the be-all and end-all. A website that isn’t user-friendly will drive customers away, so there would be little point in having worked so hard on your search engine rankings in the first place.
