Notes About Business

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.

The truth of the matter is this; without SEO’s to amend websites so that the SEs (Search Engines) know how to rank them, the quality of the listings would be far worse. We are a necessity for the SE’s as we ensure that the cream rises to the top. 98% of web designers do not know how to get a website to rank within a search engine, they miss out on all of the key indicators within a site and so some well built, beautiful, expensive websites are destined to live in Pay Per Click land or in obscurity.

We have no-end of clients that have been sold beautiful and expensive sites and told it will solve all their problems, when in fact it doesn’t really do anything of the sort because no one can find it. We are constantly speaking to clients who wish that they hadn’t spent so much on the design of their website so that they could spend the money on optimisation.

What use is a website that no one can find? Even in these difficult times, as footfall starts to dwindle and profits disappear, the more forward thinking site owners are looking to improve their market share. Either by the addition of new keywords or by starting an SEO campaign in the first place, buyers still exist, shoppers are shopping, just in smaller numbers and more cautiously. The question is, are you going to take a larger share of the market and survive or are you going to become a failure statistic?

The traditional forms of trade are suffering from the online revolution while online sales rose dramatically in just one year. From Christmas 2007 to Christmas 2008, online sales rose by 25% and the companies that are benefiting from this are those that move with the new technology and evolve to the needs of its users.

Unfortunate though it is, but the Internet will destroy the high streets and eventually the majority of physical retail locations. Bricks and clicks companies are increasingly seeing their shops treated as a dressing room in preparation for an online buy later on. In a way, we the people are almost shooting ourselves in the foot because when the shops go, online shopping will be the only method left, which is nowhere near the same experience.

SEO will be driven by retailers needing to save money and increase footfall to both their bricks and clicks shops. It will be an interesting year in which I think we will see some more household names join, Woolworths, MFI, etc on the scrapheap. The big question is……. will you do enough to protect your market share in 2009?