Maybe you’ve heard the term SEO but have no idea what it is. Possibly you know it stands for search engine optimization but are still in the dark about its meaning. You’re not alone.
According to a survey done in 2009, just under half of small business owners had websites, but I’m willing to bet that the number has risen during the past two years. If you are one of those businesses with a website, hopefully your web design firm has educated you on the importance of creating a site that is search engine-friendly.
Besides having a site that’s user-friendly—easy to navigate and easy to read—your site needs to be easy for search engines to index and to “crawl” for information. That’s really what SEO is all about, making it easy for the search engines to work their magic. Google and Bing have bots that go over each website’s content so that search engines can provide helpful results when someone is looking for, let’s say, “used cars in Boston.” This includes a variety of things like clean website code, targeted title tags and link building through things such as social media—all of which a respectable web company would be knowledgeable in.
Using search engines is one way to increase traffic to your business’s website, which will result in exposure to a larger audience of potential customers. In essence, search traffic allows business owners to market to people that they may not have been able to reach otherwise.
I found the infographic below that helps illustrate the importance of a search-engine-optimized website. Some key highlights:
- 90% of men and 91% of women use search engines
- Google produces more than 1 billion search queries every day
- 74% of customers say that they use search engines when shopping for a product or service
That last point should resonate with you. Three out of four people use a search engine to find products or services before they buy. If you want your website to be seen when your customers are online looking, SEO is a good place to start.
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