Is Your Website Invisible?

Last Friday I was talking to a Real Estate Broker who was lamenting the disappointing performance of his website. Mind you, the website looks fine and has all the typical bells and whistles you’ve come to expect from a Realtor®. It’s just not getting any traffic.

For all intents and purposes, his website is invisible. His prospective clients can’t find it. The money he spends to get clients to his website is considerable. And, unfortunately, wasted.

Another local businessman was spending over $1,000.00 a month to have his business advertised in a website run by a large and well-known newspaper publisher. I asked him how much business this web ad is sending him. He admitted, “I have no way to measure it, but not much.”

While on opposite sides of the marketing spectrum, the solution for both businesses is this. Targeted Search Engine Optimization. When you think of Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, you may be thinking scam. You’ve received the emails and letters. They guarantee top rankings in major search engines, or claim to have cracked the Google algorithm. What a crock! Even Google gets them. On their website, they plainly state that “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.”

SEO is real and works when implemented properly. As You can see in the picture, when you type the search term “Murfreesboro Website Design”, two local firms dominate the top organic listings in Google. Ok, here’s a confession. I own one of those design firms. I could’ve picked hot dog vendors to illustrate my point. But if your customers are looking for website design in Murfreesboro, that’s a pretty good place to be, wouldn’t you agree?

You’ve been told “If you build it, they will come”. Not true. They’ll only come if you show them how to get there. So, what will get your website noticed by Google? The answer to that question changes on a regular basis. You see, it would make sense that if you were selling widgets, you could create a website with information about the widgets you sell and expect it to be indexed by Google within a few months. That’s how it used to work before May in 2007. And then Google implemented “universal search”.

This means it’s no longer enough to have good content on your website, you now have to have incoming links from other websites, and a blog is now a necessity. It also helps to have video, audio, and links from social media sites like Digg.

Next week I’ll give you specific SEO techniques and strategies that you can implement to get your website on Google’s radar. If you can’t wait that long, go to my website and get on my “Business Buzz” mailing list. I’ll send you a free 14 page report that will get you started.

About the Author:

Ken Ivey is a veteran geek, consultant, author, web designer, and President of MidTN Technology, a marketing and web design firm. For more information, call 615-278-9324 or visit www.kenivey.com

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