It still amazes me when I come across a marketing company that designs websites, but doesn’t optimize them for the search engines.
Talk about all dressed up, with no place to go. Wait… let’s change that – more like, “all dressed up, but locked in the house!”
What is the point of designing a website that looks attractive and has excellent content describing a company’s product or service? Don’t you want to market your business to the widest possible audience? I guess, if your business is making a ton of money already, you don’t have to. But how many companies can honestly say they’re in a position to turn away business, especially in this economy?
When you fail to optimize your site for the search engines, your company’s marketing department (or you, the owner, if you have a small business) will have to work that much harder to get the word out. Not to mention, why invest your hard-earned money on a website if you’re not going to maximize its potential? Talk about squandering your ROI.
If you don’t optimize your website, there are only a few ways someone can find your website online:
- You get the website’s URL directly from someone at the company.
- You link to it from another company’s website.
- You link to it from a social media platform such as LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.
Maybe that’s why some companies feel they don’t need to spend the money on optimizing their website. They think they can get the word out through social media. And they may be right, to an extent. But optimizing your website doesn’t have to cost a fortune. In fact, you can find plenty of tips online to do this yourself. At the very least, you should come up with unique, keyword-rich titles and descriptions for your web pages. You don’t have to worry about coming up with a list of keywords for the meta tag, since the major search engines don’t use them anymore.
But if you don’t have the time or the inclination, hire someone to do it for you. If your web designer isn’t proficient, find an SEO specialist. Ask your friends for a referral. As a certain athletic shoe maker says, just do it!
