Technology
Lost and found
Optimize your Web site to help customers find your business — and double your return on investment along the way.
By Jessica Tremayne
Smart Business Los Angeles | November 2008
Page 1 of 3
If your IT guru has told you that something called search engine optimization is
the way to go, but you’re still foggy about
what it is or why you should care, consider
this: When done right, SEO could double
your return on investment and help you
acquire scores of new customers.
Search engine optimization in its most
basic form is simply about making your
Web site appear higher up in search results
from sites like Google and Yahoo.
Search engines are the starting point of
almost all online activity, second only to e-mail, yet more than half of readers surveyed by Smart Business say they never
plan to factor search engine optimization
into their marketing budget. Search engine
optimization has a rightful place in every
company’s budget, yet few companies ‘get
it,’ and they don’t allocate serious funds
into the development of a program.
It all starts when a potential customer
enters a search term into Google. Two
types of search results are displayed: natural and pay-per-click.
Natural search, which are the results
shown on the left side of any search page,
are based on merit and validity to the keywords used. The results in the narrow column on the right are pay-per-click results.
When you optimize your site for natural
search, it can take three months to see
progress in your rankings. The better the
optimization, the higher up your site will
appear in relevant searches, increasing
your chances for a sale.
Pay-per-click gets immediate results by
displaying your ad when someone searches for a particular keyword that you
choose, but you are charged every time
someone clicks on your site. This is an
advertisement and a temporary fix.
