Your company has the fancy web site, chock-full of bells and whistles - gorgeous graphics, snazzy rollover links and useful drop-down navigation. Web surfers should be flocking to your site, eagerly seeking your products . . . right.
Not to burst your bubble, but simply having a web site, does not entitle you to traffic. The harsh reality is the numbers are stacked against you - there are nearly 170 million web sites, more than 110 million blogs . . . and just 24 hours-in-a-day.
The web is a big pond with hundreds of millions of fish, so you have plenty of competition when trying to wrangle your way up the Internet food chain.
Discouraging? Yes. Impossible? Not at all.
Cost-effective solutions, like those from companies like mine - Netconcepts, exist to rope in your targets online. The team at Netconcepts have the expertise and proprietary technology to grow any company’s bottom line with the web, and it all starts with getting found.
Visibility Matters
A 2008 Jupiter Research study shows that 27 percent of American adult search engine users review only a few search results before clicking on one - more than half won’t go beyond the first page. That means if your site is buried on page two or deeper, 50 percent of consumers who are interested in your products never even get to consider you.
If you cannot drive traffic, your souped-up site is worthless - like a great diner in the middle of nowhere, it may have excellent service and phenomenal food, but very few people will ever experience it.
Say the diner relocates to a spot near a main Interstate, where thousands of travelers pass everyday. Being more visible, it will likely see more traffic and more sales. Get the idea? It is time to get visible on the information super highway.
Getting on the Map
Search engine optimization (SEO) increases visibility cost effectively. Circumventing pricey pay-per-click advertising, it improves your site’s organic or natural search engine results page rankings. Participants clicked on these rather than sponsored content in 80 percent of their searches, according to a 2007 Penn State study.
Organic search rankings drive online sales. With a median conversion rate of 3.1 percent, and considering Americans conducted 10.4 billion searches in March alone, this can lead to significant results.
No Job Too Small
Online purchasers care more about what they buy than where they buy it. Here, small businesses have equal opportunity to compete with big name retailers. SEO helps you fight those online Goliaths, or, at the very least, get you considered.
If local business is what you are after, SEO is for you, too. The web is the new Yellow Pages, according to a September 2007 Visible Web/Nielsen Net Ratings naming search engines are now the top resource consumers use when looking for products and services locally.
Small Investment, Big Payoff
Driving traffic to your site does come with some costs. It requires dedication and some investment on your part. However, not doing anything will cost you as well.
How many sales leads have you already missed if you are not speaking to more than half of the online consumers interested in your products?
What could your bottom line have been if you had a noticeable presence on a top consumer resource?
SEO if done right can lead to significant gains. Some of Netconcepts’ customers have seen remarkable sales increases of 500 percent and triple digit sales growth in less than a year. Imagine what a little SEO could do for your business . . .
For more information about Netconcepts, call 888-207-1109 or log on to www.netconcepts.com.
Stephan Spencer is founder/president of Netconcepts.
