This makes your web site and its content attractive, relevant and visible to search engines and web searchers.
Why is this important? Consider what it would be like if no one could easily find your place of business, or even your telephone number. Most businesses could not continue for long in such a situation.
The same thing can happen with your web site if people cannot easily locate it. Traffic volume, if it existed at all, slows to a crawl. Potentially valuable customers never even know you are there.
"Wait!" you say. "I had a web site created, and the address is included in all of our advertising. Why wouldn't people be able to find it?"
Certainly, existing customers or those who are already familiar with your company should be able to find your site without any great difficulty, but this may not be the case.
Can you be sure that every potential customer has been reached by your advertising? What about the people who don't read the magazines or newspapers where you chose to place advertisements?
Did they hear the right radio station? Did they watch the right television show? Did they get one of the thousands of brochures you mailed?
So, what about the search engines? Those people could just enter a few words into a text box, click a button, and voila! There is a link to your web site. Aren't search engines wonderful?
Yes, search engines can be wonderful, and the scenario above can happen, but not without some work. This is where SEO comes in.
A case in point
Let us consider first a web site that I know of which is extremely difficult to find. This particular site is for a fine restaurant in the community where I live.
I didn't know the address of their site, so I went to Google.com, entered the name of the restaurant into the text box, and clicked the search button.
Many links were listed, but none seemed to have anything to do with the restaurant. To the search terms I added the name of the city where the restaurant is located.
Here were links that did pertain to the restaurant, but they all seemed to be links to news articles and reviews, not to the site of the restaurant itself. What was wrong? Did they actually not have a site?
Luckily, one of the news articles did mention the web site address. It is a very beautiful site, pleasing to the eye and ear.
Related:
- Ad Agency's Disruptive Future? Can The Old Dogs Survive It?
- links for 2007-10-14
- Ad Exchanges: Bidding On Banners And Beyond
- Quotes from Michael Nutley of New Media Age
