So you used your style guide, your ballin’ web designers, and you built a gorgeous, easy to use, gem of a site…but no one ever comes to visit.
The problem is: if it isn’t easy for people to find you, they won’t. Be honest, how many times do you look past the first page on Google? Even past the top four or five?
If you are at all as guilty as I am, those sites listed on page two have no hope. This is where search engine optimization or SEO comes into play. SEO encompasses a broad range of technical strategies for driving your site up in search engine results. In basic terms, there are specific ways you can build and manage your web site so that it is search engine optimized.
The easier it is for search engines to index your site and save key words that are associated with your site, the more it will come up in searches involving those terms.
Leaving all the technical strategies for another time, the best way to boost SEO is content. The more content you create that is useful your audience, the higher in the search rankings you will be, and the more traffic you will have. The content should be related to the core of what your business is, terms that you include in titles, headings, tweets, blogs, or otherwise, should include terms you want to be known for.
The more relevant you are on the terms that get people to your site, the easier it is for people to find you and the longer they will stay. If you have a profile in any social network, especially Twitter, that will help you to be found even faster. Social media sites like Twitter, and Facebook are updated so often by the users that they automatically rank high. Google your name and see if those networks come up. Look at your profile and make sure that you mix in the key words that are relevant to your audience so you can start attracting customers through social media outlets as well!
Relevant traffic will translate into sales.
Ride Like a Penguin Chapter 12: Where Are You?