Given that there are now billions of websites, more than there have ever been before, competing for the attention of internet users, businesses looking to make the most of the opportunities afforded to them by embracing the internet have their work cut out for them. Most internet users find websites that are of interest to themselves through the use of search engines such as Google. We are all familiar with how these search engines work, you give them some terms to search, known as a query, and the search engine then returns a list of pages relevant to the search query.
This is beautifully simple from the perspective of the user who is doing the searching, however, for the website owners themselves, who want to ensure that their site appears prominently in the results that are returned, the picture is a little more complicated. Even if you have the most well designed and informative website in the world, if you do not implement good search engine optimization (SEO) techniques then your website is doomed to languish in obscurity forever.
Obviously a website which isn’t pulling in traffic isn’t doing much good for its owner, or for their business. It is therefore in the interests of any individual or business who operates online to learn as much as they can about good SEO practice and to ensure that they put it at the heart of their web design efforts.
In this article we’re going to take a look at some of the most compelling reasons to invest in your SEO score and why your web design decisions should be guided by SEO.
Traffic
This is what it’s all about, traffic. In the language of the internet, there are a number of different ways that we can measure traffic. For example, the number of visitors that a website receives in any given day is a good indicator of the website’s popularity. However, when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of your SEO strategy, you need to look at more than just the number of visitors. If your SEO is pulling in more traffic from users who haven’t previously visited your website before, then you will want to know how many unique visitors you have had, that is how many different individuals have visited your site, rather than the number of clicks they have generated.
Competition
We live in a world which is much more competitive than it used to be. The sheer number of individuals and businesses who are competing in various marketplaces means that competition is fiercer than ever before. SEO is an essential tool for any businessperson who wants their website to stand out. The higher you appear in search results lists, the more traffic you will generate. It is staggering how quickly the number of clicks you receive drops off as you move down the search results list.
Legitimacy
SEO packages represent excellent value as investments, but you can’t really put a price on one of their main benefits, which is the legitimacy a website gains by being listed prominently in search results. Web users are more likely to trust the reputation of a site which is listed near the top of results.
SEO is an integral part of modern web design and an aspect that web owners and businesses can’t afford to overlook.