Welcome to Part 4 in my series called 7 Ways Your Website Can Help Your Business. We’re going to take a look at how your website can attract more customers through search and through internet advertising in plain English.
Attracting Customers Through Search
Even if you don’t sell products or services directly from your website, your website is a vital connection between your business and future customers. It may not be the case now, but more and more of your customers will be finding you through the web. Is your website easy to find? How do you know? One way is to do a search for your own website, of course! Then you will be confronted with the exact same problem your own future customers face: what do you type into the search box at Google or Yahoo? If you just type in the name of your company, it will probably come up in the search results at or near the top.
But how is somebody who doesn’t know you exist supposed to find you? Now you really have to put yourself in your customers’ shoes. What would they use as words to search? Conduct this little experiment for yourself: go to your favorite search engine and try searching for the services or products your company sells without using your company’s name. What kinds of results did you see? Who was number one? Did you see your company? If you did, you can skip down to the part about internet advertising! 
Chances are good you probably didn’t come up on the first page of search results. If you threw in the name of your state or geographic area as keywords (search terms), the chances of you appearing the first page of search results are higher, but it still isn’t likely to happen.
So, how do you help your website help your business by making your business findable? Didn’t your web designer already do this? Most web designers still don’t understand the importance of search engine optimization, or SEO. They may come from more of a programming background or a graphic design background. Neither background gives a person any skills or experience in SEO. It must be learned in addition to existing web design or programming skills. The field is specialized enough that it is all some people do, and they are known as SEO consultants.
You (or your web designer) can make some of the more surface changes an SEO consultant would recommend. Exactly how this is to be done is so dependant on the technical specifications of how your website is set up that I cannot offer any specific advice about this information is to be edited. If you don’t know, make sure your web designer does. If he or she does not, get a new web designer! Here are some of the things you can do:
- Get an idea of what keywords people are using to find your site and similar sites
- See if those keywords exist in the written content of your web pages
- If they don’t, rewrite them or add new pages so that they contain the keywords, especially on the home page or individual pages for specific products or services
- See if those keywords exist in the titles of each page (the title is in the title bar of your web browser window when you visit a web page)
- If they don’t, rewrite your titles so that they contain those keywords
The above is certainly not an exhaustive list, but it will get you started and even if it’s all you do it should have a positive effect (although I cannot guarantee your results). If you want to learn more about SEO, there are many excellent websites and some books on the subject (see the Learn More section at the end of the post).
Getting found online means getting more business. People are beginning to use the internet now more than the phonebook to find information on prospective companies to do business with. Often the first thing they do is go to Google and do a search. Being on the first page of search results is money in the bank. A search optimized website can definitely help your business.
Attracting Customers Through Internet Advertising
Another way to get found is through advertising online. The most well-known method for this is a service provided by Google called AdWords. When you’ve done searches at Google in the past, you probably noticed that some of the search results at the top or right side of the results pages were labeled as “sponsored links.” Advertising through Google AdWords makes you one of those sponsors. You bid on keywords that people use in searches related to your industry. The highest bid for a keyword wins and that ad gets shown on the search results pages.
Google doesn’t charge you any more than a few cents over what was required to win the bid. If someone clicks on your ad, they are directed to your site, where, hopefully, they can easily make a purchase, sign up for your service, or whatever you want them to do (this is called conversion. When they click on your ad, you’re charged for that click. That’s how Google makes their money and how you get new customers.
The idea with this form of advertising is that your ads only appear in searches where there’s a match between the keywords you think people will use to try and find you, and the keywords they actually use to try and find you. The people driven to your site by these ads are highly prequalified. Once they land on your site, the rest of it’s up to you (that’s a subject for a future post). Relevant, accurately targeted traffic from your ads is the goal, because these are the people who are most likely to want to buy what you’re selling.
Google AdWords isn’t the only form of this type of advertising online, but it’s the most widely used service by far, and it gets results. Yahoo and Microsoft have their own programs, and there are many others run by smaller companies. Internet advertising can really help drive traffic to your company’s website, and that’s good for business.
Learn More
Books
Search Engine Optimization For Dummies is a great way to get started without having to search all over the internet to learn about this often confusing and arcane topic. Some people dislike the titles of these books because they don’t like to think of themselves as “dummies.” Whatever—these books are well-written and cover the basics in a way the beginner needs.
Building Your Business with Google For Dummies is one of the best how-to’s I’ve ever read on this subject, online or off. I read it about a year ago, and it looks like this is an updated version that covers some changes and improvements Google has made to their advertiser services. Google is the #1 online advertising service to use, and this book is the best thing I’ve ever read to explain how to get the most out of it.
Web Guides / Ebooks
- SEO Book is a site and an ebook you can buy. Not only is an ebook, it is the ebook on the subject! I subscribe to SEO Book’s blog posts and read them eagerly when there’s a new one.
- SEOmoz Beginner’s Guide to SEO is written as an introduction to SEO concepts, but it’s also very thorough… and free! I highly recommend it. The Beginnier’s Guide to SEO covers the basic, necessary steps I outlined above.
Internet Advertising
These are links to the “big three” companies’ advertiser services. Microsoft is the newest entrant into this space with their AdCenter services.
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