The great thing about
the internet is that it is so large. There’s so much information
available, there’s so many web sites and
there’s so many people hunting for information.
The
problem is matching the information
to the people who are searching for it. Putting
this more specifically, the problem is ensuring
that when someone searches for business card
design, you are on of the first matches to
appear in the search engine.
That means
being on the first or second page of the Google
matches. For the example of brochure design
it means being in the top 20 out of
25 million.
Those are
tough odds because you can lay bets that there’s
a lot of other brochure designers, business card
printers, jewelry stores, etc also trying to
be in that top 20.
There’s also
a lot of companies telling you they will put
you in the top 20. Over 29 million based upon
a Google search for Search Engine Optimization
plus a bunch spelt optimisation. This is a whole
industry known as SEO for short, dedicated to
the science or art of trying to their clients
pages into that magic top 20 or, the holy grail,
#1.
If there was a magic formula
or software out there that could get you in
the top 20, everyone would be in the top 20.
Obviously there isn’t
because they aren’t.
There are some pretty
basic business guidelines to consider if you
are considering making use of another company
to improve to Web sales:
Your
web site should adhere to some basic rules.
Any good web developer can help you with these
and I will cover these in a future article. They
relate to relevant content, good titles and
descriptions, good navigation and other techniques
designed to ensure that when Google finds your
site it knows what it has found and is able to
correctly interpret it.
There are two key techniques that
will definitely help.
The first is good content. This means that
if you are selling a particular product, have
lots of pages relevant to that product. Provide
background information, how-to’s, white
papers, frequently asked questions. If this
is done well, the search engines will start
to think that your site is the site that has
the best information about the products you
are selling. This is what you want. If Google
thinks you are the best then you are #1.
For example, if you design business
cards provide articles on printing, inks, colors,
business cards from around the world, humorous
business cards, famous names, etc.
The second are links
from other sites. If lots of other sites that
print business cards link to your business
card design site then Google will assume your
site is important. These are known as backlinks.
These and ensuring you are in the directories
on the web (such as Yahoo, dmoz, and many more)
will ensure that Google gets reminded you exist
whenever it goes searching those sites. These
backlinks are a major part of how Google determines
which sites are most important.
The reality of all this is that the
effort involved in doing this is non-trivial.
And it is not one-off, it continues for as
long as you want your web site to be #1. Finding
a good SEO company is very difficult. They will
sell themselves based upon your “ranking”.
They will say “we can make you a top
20 site”.
The hard part for you is that you want to be
top 20 for searches that will lead to a sale
of your products. Being
top 20 for postcards if they are seaside souvenirs
is not much use to the bottom line of a company
designing marketing postcards.
Good SEO companies
will cost 1,000’s of
dollars per month. Quite simply it's an
advertising expense and that money is what
it costs in effort to do the job. Remember
that you get what you pay for.
There’s
29 million SEO hits on Google waiting for you
to click on them!
To leave you with a tip, the first SEO companies
to look at are the first 20 of those 29 million.
