A client called me the other day to ask if I could review the SEO of his site because he was concerned about his ”position in Google”. This is not unusual.
I get calls like this all the time and my immediate response is to ask what they are trying to achieve. Invariably the answer comes back that they’re looking to get more business from the website.
Before going any further, let’s look at the process flow for a typical website.
- Someone does a search, on say Google, using a keyword phrase and they see your website listed.
- They read the listed title and text snippet about your site and decide to click on it.
- They arrive at your site – on a landing page – and start to read. They are interested enough to look at other pages of the site.
- Finally they decide they are interested in your services and pick up the phone and call; you.
In order to get business from your site, all 4 of these steps have to be effective. However, the place to start is not at step 1 but at step 4. If your site doesn’t capture people’s interest and persuade them to pick up the phone then no matter what you do to improve step 1, you search engine position, you won’t get business from the site.
So before you start spending money and/or effort trying to improve your site’s search engine rankings, look at your site and make sure it is effective when visitors arrive at it.
The quest for higher search engine rankings can become a money pit unless your website is well designed and optimized.
