The way we conduct our business is forever changing. Years ago, we used to conduct our business face to face and in person only. Today, we video chat, send out mass emails and use social media to reach hundreds of thousands of clients every day. Also, the way we generate new leads for our business has changed, as well. However, with all of the noise out there how can we compete? It’s pretty bad when it is proven that the average person has the attention span of fewer than eight seconds. That means that businesses today have less than eight seconds to attract the attention of their potential customers. So how do we business owners compete with everyone out there trying to attract the attention of our current and potential clients?
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Build it and they will come, they say.
Well, long gone is the old saying of “build it, and they will come.” Your website is, most likely, buried in a sea of other websites that the search engines don’t even rank anymore. You will be very fortunate if your site can even be found with all of the new algorithms and search engine optimization that your competitors are engaged in. If you’re not engaged in SEO, then your business is losing out in the race for your customer’s attention. It used to be that you could set a few meta tags into your website code and you would rank pretty high on the search engines.
How to get your website found in the search engines?
You have two choices to get your website found. You can learn to do it yourself or you can hire a professional to do it for you. As a business person, I prefer to hire an experienced company to do my SEO. If you take on the task of attempting to “do it yourself,” you will be on a very tough learning curve. It will be a lot of trial by error and to be perfectly honest with you, as a business person, I just don’t have the time nor can I afford to waste money on such an endeavor. So my choice becomes clear; hire a professional to do my SEO for me.
How do you choose a good SEO company?
I looked up SEO companies that are highly rated and found a few that I decided to interview. Also, I wanted to give you the three best ways that you can tell you are making the right choice.
SEO strategies based on your company’s goals, not just traffic. You need and want targeted traffic. So traffic for the sake of generating sales and leads is in your company’s best interest.
Educating you on how SEO works and what you can do to improve it. I, like you, don’t want to be told that they have a “secret sauce” or a “magic pill” and told to blindly trust them. As a business owner, I want to know their plan and how I fit into that mix. For instance, when I make a Facebook post that re-directs to my blog or website, what I should include in the hashtag, etc.
An understanding of your user experience. I want to know who my visitors are and how I can help them use my website or blog effectively. If they are local or global customers looking for my business, what information do they need to make an informed decision to purchase or use my products or services?
SEO isn’t just for online businesses anymore.
With the internet becoming bombarded with startups, e-commerce, and off-line businesses, it is hard to rise above all of the products and services that are being offered today. Most businesses that are not on-line think that search engine optimization has no effect on them directly. However, they are dead wrong. If you own a small mom and pop shop you still need to have a presence on the internet now more than ever. So, it doesn’t matter what type of business you own, you still need to be concerned with SEO.
About Carson Derrow
