Search engine optimisation is constantly moving at an astounding rate. All of the search engines are always updating their algorithm to try to give their users the best possible results.
There are two basic views that people share on the way search engine optimizers are adjusting their web sites to get in the way of qualified traffic, and they are that it is a fair way of manipulating search results, and second is simply that it is an unfair way of manipulating results.
In truth, if SEO didn’t exist to adjust websites so that they’re readable by the search engines, then the search engine results you would get a lot less organised and all over the place really. Search engine optimizers are necessary to ensure that the most qualified websites rise to the top. 9 out of 10 web designers don’t know how to make a website rank well in search engine results. They tend to miss all the key on-page criteria that SEs look for and so a well built, all-singing all-dancing expensive website will most of the time be doomed to float around among the masses of other websites that will never be found, or to sit in a pay-per-click listing for the rest of its life.
I see so many clients who are sold expensive websites as the answer to their dreams, when it truth they are nothing of the kind. I see so many clients who wish they had spent thousands less on the design so that they could spend it on SEO instead.
Common sense will tell you that there’s no point in having a website that no one can find. Even in these harsh economic times as turnover is dwindling and profits are all but gone, the forward thinking website owners will look to increase their market share by either starting an SEO campaign or adding new keywords to their current campaign. There are still buyers out there to be had, but they are simply shopping more cautiously and in fewer numbers, but what you as a site owner, you need to ask yourself is, are you going to be proactive and move forward to take your share of the market, or will you hang back and end up as another failure statistic?
As more traditional forms of trade begin to suffer, online sales increased during the Christmas 2008 period by over 25% on 2007. Some companies are making money by embracing new technologies and moving with the times, others are going to fail if they don’t evolve successfully to meet the needs of the 21st century consumer.
I think it is unfortunate, but the Internet will kill the British high street, and in the fullness of time, the retail park too. More and more, bricks and clicks retailers are seeing theirs shops used as fitting rooms for an online purchase at a later date. To a certain extent, we as people are shooting ourselves in the foot somewhat as once the shops are gone we will have to manage with just the virtual world to shop in…….. which isn’t the same experience at all.
SEO will be brought into common light by retailers having to save money while increase turnover at the same time. This year is going to be interesting as I think we are bound to see more big names bite the dust along with MFI and Woolworths. The question is though, what will you do ensure you keep your market share in 2009 and will it be enough?
