Google-Friendly Equals User-Friendly Most businesses are eager to implement Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques to improve the ranking of their product keywords within search engines. What they might not realize is that by implementing SEO, users will be invited to a much more user-friendly Web site. SEO has been around as long as the Web. But, things have changed in the way search engines index Web pages. For example, using keywords in metatags, descriptions and other standard optimization techniques no longer work. They had their time and place but search engines are now smarter and more stringent about what is allowed and what isn’t. SEO cannot be achieved by quick implementation of a program purchased online. It takes understanding of your business and hard work. Google is the number 1 search engine in the world. It offers several free tools to help position your company near the top of its search engine, and at the same time increase usability of your site. The major tools are Analytics, Webmaster Tools and AdWords. Implementing all of these options are vital to help users find your Web site, and increase sales of your products. Google Analytics is a Web site statistics application. Analytics lets you view, at a glance, the activity on your site. Information includes how long users are spending on your site, where your Web site visitors are located geographically and network location. You’ll see what pages visitors entered on and what pages they left. You can easily find out whether visitors are entering your site directly by typing your web address, through keywords in a search engine, or from a reference on another site. The information gained from Analytics helps determine how to further implement SEO into your site. At BMG, we set up all of our clients under Google Analytics as part of our standard Web site implementation. Once this is set-up, a client has the opportunity to see how well its Web site is performing from any PC. Webmaster Tools provide you with the tools to make your Web site more Google-friendly. This is where you can instruct Google about what specific pages you want indexed, choose a primary domain name, upload a sitemap and find out what pages Google is having trouble indexing. Simply put, this service provides the means to ensure that your Web site is effortlessly crawled (searched in an automated manner) and indexed by Google. Finally, the AdWords program will help you reach prospective customers through Google’s keyword search engine. Using AdWords, when visitors type key words into the search field, your company’s ad will appear on the right hand side of the page as a sponsored link. And the best part – you don’t pay a penny until a visitor clicks on your link. This is what is called a “cost-per-click” program. The yearly budget needed for an average program is about the cost of two ad placements in a publication (about $10,000). How many leads did your company receive from the last ad placed in a printed publication? BMG recently worked with one client to use the AdWords program – improving its search engine ranking instantly. Instead of being buried on page 13 in Google, the company appears at the very top of the search engine result in the sponsored link. Search Engine Optimization methods are extremely dynamic. What will work today might not be the best approach a year from now. The most important thing to consider is that an active SEO program is about more than just a few product keywords, it’s about making your Web site more accessible and useful to those who visit.
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