Google recently gave the following advice to webmasters about getting their sites to rank better in the SERPs:
In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by creating high-quality sites that users will want to use and share.
As Moz’s co-founder, Rand Fishkin, stated in a recent blog article in response to this advice, it’s almost accurate. The issue that comes from this is that there’s a big difference in creating a website that people want to use and share and creating a site that people do use and share.
Unfortunately the adage “build it and they will come” does not apply to the internet.
Any website that is built must be undertaken with the knowledge that the only way the site is going to get traffic is by the use of a strong marketing campaign. With at least 3.93 billion web pages in existence there really is no other way. Websites are often built with all of the site owner’s resources in the development stage of site design and little forethought to the time period after the launch date. Once the site is launched the owner then questions why they’re not listed on Google for specific industry terms.
Point blank, people use sites they can find. The only way to do that is by knowing your audience’s demographic. Your site needs to walk the walk, talk the talk, and deliver exactly what they’re looking for. Every time. With no exceptions. To do this you must get into your demographic’s heads and find the best way to reach them.
As a business owner you know your ideal customer. For example, if you sold surf boards on Long Island you’d be looking to target males between the ages of 16 and 45. You’d also know that a lot of spots go by multiple names because each surfer names a spot the first time they surf it. You may know some, but not all of these names. So you may not realize that your future customers are searching for a term like Back Door to find a spot out by the Montauk lighthouse.
This sort of discovery is a Search Engine Optimizer’s (SEO) bread and butter. We make it our business to know which keywords are going to bring traffic to your site and get you a sale or a lead submission. We do competitive analysis and make decisions off of hard numbers to get your site found.
The best way to avoid being lost in the Google shuffle is to bring an SEO on during the design process of rebuilding a site. The SEO will do research in order to get the best possible URL structure and keyword list for your site to maximize visibility. Working together, designers and SEOs create visually appealing and easily accessible information for both you and your customers.
