“It’s like throwing 100 dollar bills out on your lawn.”
– Paul Jontig
I don’t think Paul was the first person to coin this saying, but I LOVED that he brought it up during our company meeting back in 2008.
But that’s pretty much what we were doing. Throwing away money.
We were embroiled in a long meeting discussing all the places we were losing money. The website was one of those places. Paul and I have since moved on from that company, but that line and the meaning behind that line, still serves as a great illustration for me.
When you don’t optimize your website, you lose money..
Every.
Single.
Day.
You lose money by not attracting traffic.
You lose money by not targeting the right kind of traffic.
Once your company website is optimized, every day from that point forward, it can bring new opportunities that weren’t there before.
And the kicker is you only need to do it once.
Understanding How Search Engines Work – They Crawl Your Website
Most search engines, like Google for instance, “crawl” websites to discover what content is on them. The Googlebot, as it’s known, looks through each page of your website and learns what the pages are about by reading the text on the page as well as some other important tags in the source code.
The way Google finds the next page to read on your website is by discovering other links on your webpages. Like this one.
This is why it’s a really good idea to have text link navigation on websites to this day. You can also submit a sitemap file to Google Search Console to make sure Google sees a fresh list of links more quickly.
The Title Tag: The #1 Priority For All Websites
There’s one tag that is absolutely crucial to search engine optimization. It’s called the title tag.
The title tag is found by viewing the source of your website. It begins with < title > and ends with < / title >. The words inside this tag should explain what the page is about.
Some websites, for whatever reason, will have poorly optimized title tags. Either they are too broad or just lack specificity. Additionally, how pages are structured in relation to each other can really make or break a site in terms of how well it was optimized.
So, Why Should You Have A Website Optimized For Search Engine Performance?
The number one reason is for correct targeting. You want to be sure that your website (or your company’s website) is targeting the right visitors and the search terms that matter to them.
One thing that most businesses don’t always get is that their customers use different language than what the company uses internally to describe what it is that they do. This is a critical issue in SEO.
Speak your customer’s language, not industry jargon.
A good search engine optimizer will take this into account AND do thorough keyword analysis to discover more language that delivers additional search engine traffic.
After a proper audit is conducted, adjustment to the website’s tags, copy and code can be performed to increase the targeting potential of a website. This doesn’t necessarily mean the website will get more search engine traffic, but it will mean that the website will be targeting the right traffic. And this is the first step to search engine marketing that every business should get done.
Targeted traffic results in:
- Attracting the right customers to your website
- Increased marketing touches of future customers
- Higher conversion rates of website traffic
The Most Overlooked, Yet Greatest Opportunity That Search Engine Optimization Can Provide
Having just one webpage that provides business value (meaning it attracts your target customer), can provide near infinite return on investment. Simply because, once that page is indexed in the search engines, it can continually attract visitors for the life of the business. That’s why it’s imperative that you have a business audit performed for your company website.
And why just have one page optimized?
Why not create multiple pages that attract targeted visitors for each service you provide?
Let’s Get This Done!
We’re in business because we help businesses around the world get optimized to attract their target customers. If you’re serious about taking action on having your website optimized, please schedule a time to talk to our founder, Sean Work, below: