Why optimization is important
The name Google is so widely used that
it’s the newest verb in the English language.
Everyone knows of the search engine
because it has a commanding market share
(various online sources cite 60 to 70 percent on average), so the connection is easy
to make: If your Web site ranks high on
Google, that’s the best way to reach an
audience that’s looking for your goods or
services. SEO gets your name in front of
consumers at a time they are looking to
buy what you sell.
SEO creates compelling information on
your site, makes it easy to find and spreads
your name around the Internet as much as
possible. In the process, your site will be
placed ahead of your competition when keywords are searched related to your business.
“SEO is the new Yellow Pages, but it’s not
all alphabetical,” says James Yancey, managing director, 360i. “Consumers look at
the first sites they see as the best. Making
sure your site ranks high is the best way to
influence people in digital space.”
Competition plays a role in the difficulty in
ranking high, but a series of criteria installed
by Google and implemented by SEO firms
help make the ranking determination.
“Companies shy away from SEO because
they don’t understand it, or they’ve had a
bad experience in the past,” says William
Flaiz, vice president of SEO and Web analytics, Avenue A/Razorfish “This is unfortunate
because their site is suffering in the end. A
professional SEO firm will be able to tell
their clients what keywords generated traffic to their site, how long people stayed on
the site and what pages they clicked on.”
The longer you wait to take action, the
more difficult it will be to get your site
ranked higher.
“Waiting to perform SEO will increase the
amount you’ll need to invest in optimization
to achieve the same goals as investing
today,” Yancey says. “Competition for keywords and overall growth of the Internet
will make it more expensive to wait and
[take] longer to see results.”
