Does Your Business Website Actually Need SEO?

With so much emphasis on SEO these days, a question that many business owners haven’t given much thought to, is whether they even need it or whether search engine optimising their website is a worthwhile exercise. We believe that the importance of SEO can be determined simply by how you view your website.

If all you want from your site is a landing page for potential customers who have been driven there by other marketing material, then what you require is basically that – an online sales support tool. However, you may want to capitalise on the potential your website has to generate new customers and leads, and use it as your primary business marketing tool. If you identify with the second statement, then some form of SEO will be one of the crucial factors in driving more traffic to your website.

SEO is all about making sure your website gets found by the right people. Here are just a few key factors in this process:

1. Tracking. It is useless to implement SEO strategies without a way to track their effectiveness. At Catchlight we recommend using Google Analytics – a free application which generates comprehensive reports on your website activity. This is easy to understand and quick to set up on your website.
2. Keywords. These play a huge part in helping potential customers find you when they search for related products or services. There are some established guidelines for keyword distribution throughout your website, and using the right key phrases can require the services of a copywriter with SEO skills to ensure that your website content is both quality reading and search engine friendly. 
   
3. Linking. Your page ranking (where your website is listed by search engines) is largely determined by the amount of ‘in-bound’ links connected to your website. If your website has valuable content, then others will post links to it – a social vote which ‘vouches’ for you. It also helps to have relevant links within your website (internal linking), and external linking contained in content such as SEO informational articles which drive traffic to your website.

There is quite a bit to think about when it comes to SEO, (and that's not even thinking about social networking, email marketing, etc) but the good news is that you can take it one step at a time, adjust where necessary, and quickly see measureable results! The Catchlight team are passionate about creating effective SEO strategies that suit your business, so if you have an interest in getting more traffic to your website, then feel free to contact us for a friendly chat.