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Is Your Website a Trainwreck?
By Mike Murray | May 23, 2007
The problem often isn’t with natural search engine optimization; it’s with disappointing websites.
Unfortunately, business executives make websites (or hire people to make them) with little or absolutely no regard for online marketing.
Great, you have a cool Flash website. Obviously you plan to do all of the marketing without organic traffic.
Want a database-drive website? Who doesn’t these days? And exactly how is that Content Management System going to work with page titles, meta data and keyword-rich URLs? Oh, it doesn’t? Ouch. The good news is that workarounds are available - at a price.
Websites have enough issues - lackluster (or worse) designs, enormous forms or no forms, invisible (or nearly invisible) phone numbers, confusing calls to action (or no “Connect-With-My-Business-Now” initiative).
The fundamentals of natural search engine optimization can work - even improve traffic to websites that have other serious ongoing issues like color selection, navigation flaws, shopping carts with a serious case of hiccups (bring in the monsters and brown bags).
Get decent links, develop content with keywords people use and use keywords in page titles. Of course, integrating all of that and keeping up with it month to month requires patience, diligence and some know-how.
You either need to hire an established pro on the outside or hire some awesome talent for your payroll (if one person has all of the right skill sets).
From what I see on the internet, plenty of websites are doing neither. And it’s unfortunate.
If you can market your website without natural search engine optimization, I applaud you. Those efforts often come with a fixed cost. When the money runs out, the traffic stops too.
SEO is a great deal - traffic keeps coming in even if the money runs dry or needs to be cut back. A successful SEO campaign will help a business grow and more time and attention can lead to more rankings and traffic.
SEO also works with websites in the midst of design and usability messes. You can get more visibility and traffic and sales while correcting problems that should have been corrected long ago.
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