A few short years ago, success for businesses was largely determined by huge budgets and flashy campaigns. My, how quickly things change!
These days, it’s not about how many resources you have or the size of your budgets, but the strength of your strategy. The Internet has created an equal playing ground for all organizations, and the more you know about SEO and website design, the more powerful your business will be.
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a strategy we’ve discussed in the past on our blog. Search Engines like Google and Yahoo have to sift through millions of online sites when producing results for queries. If you search apple, for example, various results could pop up including the fruit, the company and the singer Fiona Apple. So in order to provide you the best results possible and increase the possibility that you will utilize their services again, search engines have created a method by which they rank possible sites. SEO is the formula any company can use to land a coveted spot on the first page of results. So even if you’re a small start up company that only has 5 customers, so long as you’ve optimized your site to have rich keywords, effective metadata and strong inbound links, you have a great shot at being just as visible as the company that manufactures iPods and iPhones.
The strategy shouldn’t stop here, however. Once you’ve made yourself visible to prospects and directed them to your website, your first impression is everything. A well structured site that includes clear navigation, visual appeal and strong content will increase the likelihood of your customers sticking around and perhaps making a purchase. An amateur website, however, may immediately turn the prospect off and lead him or her back to Google’s homepage for another query.
In today’s fast paced world of business online, it’s important to be a participant and not a bystander. Organizations now have the rare opportunity to showcase their products and services to a worldwide audience. A well crafted website that is optimized for SEO and has a strong design can give a small company the presence of a mogul.
