Your Business Is Losing Customers To Your Competition
If you search Google for SEO or Search Engine Optimization you will find a plethora of explanations of what it means. There are a host of books that talk about the meaning of SEO. Online marketers have also weighed in with their definitions.
Here is Wikipedia’s definition: Search Engine Optimization is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine‘s unpaid results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine‘s users.
This is my simple definition as a Connecticut SEO expert. SEO means getting the customers your business needs to come to your door, your website to buy your product and your service. And the tools needed to get the customers to you are constantly changing and that’s why business owners need help.
SEO Expert of Old
Business owners who are unaware of or are afraid to embrace the new way of growing their businesses, are digging themselves into financial holes. Word of mouth and other traditional ways, (including this Yellow Pages directory I recently received in the mail) to attract customers are no longer the effective ways to grow your business. This directory is still in the plastic bag it arrived in.
Technology, specifically Internet Marketing, is here to stay and to survive, your business must take advantage of this new platform, which has now been around since the mid-1990s. Since then, close to 50 percent of the world is using the Internet to search, socialize, talk and conduct business. Using SEO is a must for business.
Some key statistics culled from www.searchenginewatch.com in 2016 and other websites show that the use of the Internet is only rising:
- Google processes, on average, over 40,000 Internet search queries every second, a mind-blowing 3.5 billion plus searches daily and 1.2 trillion searches yearly worldwide.
- The search engine industry’s worth is estimated at more than $16 billion.
- There are 2.31 billion social media users, which translates into a 31% global penetration
- Some 3.79 billion unique mobile users, representing 51% global penetration
- There are 1.97 billion mobile social media users, equating to 27% global penetration
Across the United States, brick and mortar stores are closing and sending customers to shop online. The biggest retailer in the world, Walmart leads the way.
“It appears that the retail apocalypse that made so many headlines in 2015 has gone to an entirely new level as we enter 2016,” wrote Michael Snyder in an online article titled Retail Apocalypse: 2016 Brings Empty Shelves And Store Closings All Across America. “As economic activity slows down and Internet retailers capture more of the market, brick and mortar retailers are cutting their losses.”
Walmart is not alone, Snyder points out in the story published Jan. 31.
* Wal-Mart is closing 269 stores, including 154 inside the U.S.
* K-Mart is closing down more than two dozen stores over the next several months.
* J.C. Penney will be permanently shutting down 47 more stores after closing a total of 40 stores in 2015.
* Macy’s has decided that it needs to shutter 36 stores and lay off approximately 2,500 employees.
* Aeropostale is closing 84 stores all across the U.S.
* The Gap is closing 175 stores in North America.
* Finish Line has announced that 150 stores will be shutting down over the next few years.
* Sears has shut down about 600 stores over the past year or so, but sales at the stores that remain open continue to fall precipitously.
Brick-and-mortar stores are also seeing an uptick from digital marketing. The right keywords used in SEO marketing can get the consumer to head to the right business door. In a recent article, MarketLand talked about the topic.
What this means is that the crowd heading to the Internet will only continue to grow. So if you want to reach your target customers and grow your business, you have to follow the crowd and get the help your business needs.
Your Website Is Not Showing Up On Google…
As a business owner, you have seen the massive shift of consumers heading to the Internet to conduct their business, to shop and socialize.
You decide it’s time to get your business website up and running and compete with the other businesses looking to capture the same consumer traffic. But a few weeks after you have gone digital, you can’t find your website on Google.
You panic, concerned that you have done something wrong. And since you’re not a techie, you can’t figure out what’s going on.
So, what happened?
Here are 4 Possible Reasons
Your website is not indexed: Getting a search engine to find your website, especially if it is new, takes time. Sometimes it can take several weeks. So be patient. Recently, I had a site that was not showing up during a search. My search would tell me that the site was not available.
Not enough valuable content: The copy you put on your website should be easy to read and understand. It must also include keywords that tell Google what your site is all about. For example, if it’s about Search Engine Optimization, the content must speak to SEO information. The site should not, out of the blue, include content on dog training tips. Make sure to keep the content focused and shorter than a conventional article. You also want to keep the reader engaged.
Website not optimized for search engine crawling: Google has these “bots”, short for robots, that crawl a website to search for overuse of keywords, metadata, link, the relevance of content, among other factors. If the bot or “spider” as some refer to it, does not find relevant content, the site won’t show up in searches. If the keywords are not found in the actual content of your website, that site is regarded as irrelevant.
The keywords targeted are very competitive: Depending on the business niche, your keywords might be in heavy use and it could take a long time before your site is visible on Google. Google goes through billions of content searching for keywords. So, for the bots to find your website, come up with keywords that are less competitive. Don’t forget, your website should be turning up when a search engine user makes a query. If your keywords are too general, your site is going to get lost in the crunch.
To get help resolving these issues, fill out the Discovery Form.
