Why Simply Having a Website Is Only Half the Battle

For new business owners, it may seem that as long as they have a website their customers will find them and prospects will convert into clients. Yet what some business owners may not be aware of is the need to optimize websites for SEO. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is important for websites’ ranking on search engine results pages, or SERPs. There are various factors that affect a site’s rankings on Google. A website that ranks well in SEO doesn’t just “satisfy” Google’s requirements but also helps improve the website visitor’s experience. An optimized website is one that is constantly being updated to adhere to Google’s SEO updates. Though on one hand it may seem that Google just makes website maintenance that much harder, the reality is that over the years Google has significantly improved the web experience and has helped businesses accurately portray themselves on the Internet. Let’s take a look at what the statistics say about optimized websites and why it is important to make sure that a business’s site is continually optimized.

Statistics
With 30 trillion unique web pages and 100 billion web searches per month, it has become imperative for a ranking system to be established to place the most relevant search results near the top of the SERP. Imagine if the first result on a web query turned out to be a spam website. The user would be dissatisfied and might try a different search engine. Google currently has a 67.49% market share of the global desktop search engines, with Yahoo as the distant second with 10.77%. It is evident that Google has made significant progress to gain this top position. Let’s take a look at what ranking factors determine an optimized website.

The Periodic Table of SEO
As depicted by the chart, SEO is made up of On-page SEO and Off-page SEO. On-page SEO looks at three categories that rank the content, architecture, and HTML of the site. The off-page SEO categories look at the credibility of the site, the links to and from the site, the personalization of the site, and the social activity related to the website. Google has characterized both positive and negative ranking factors. Yet Google continuously issues updates and changes, which is why it is necessary to have ongoing SEO efforts. A website can’t really achieve an “optimized” state, rather there are sites that are better optimized than others. Based off of the table, a business can take various measures to improve its websites optimization to rank better in SERPS, and in turn be better able to compete with its competitors.

SEO’s effect on PPC
One other highly lucrative reason to have ongoing search engine optimization efforts is the effect it has on boosting PPC, or pay-per-click, campaigns. At first glance it may seem that search engine optimization is a “long-term” solution to improve SERP rankings and may not be worth the effort if PPC is a quick option that provides instant and measurable results. But the truth is that an active PPC campaigns aids SEO, and vice versa.

If a website has been optimized according to Google’s ranking factors, visitors who land on the site via a PPC campaign will be more likely to convert. Another reason to have ongoing site optimization efforts is so that your site can be listed organically next to your paid advertising campaigns. Often time visitors will see your promotions in your ads and choose to click on the organic results. In this case it will help to have an optimized site.

Fighting the Good Fight
Having a website is only half the battle. If a business is not continually seeking to improve its website using white hat SEO, then that means their competitors are. An optimized site shows to the visitor that the business cares about its image and the experience it provides to its customers. All the more reason for prospects to convert into clients.

For help with website design and optimization, call ADZEDIA at 800-401-3590 today.