The Importance of Search Engine Optimization

Before you begin planning your search engine strategy it's worth considering exactly how important the results are to you. This is because you need to decide how much energy and resources to put into SEO, so you need to know what sort of results to expect for your efforts. If the benefits are likely to be minimal then you might be better off spending your energy on other areas of the website. On the other hand, if your entire business plan relies on good search engine results, you should be prepared to spend a lot of time and money getting them.

It's easy to assume that by having good search rankings, lots of people will find for your website and become customers. You need to test this thinking and make sure you're not just being optimiztic. Who exactly is the type of person you expect to attract? Imagine them as a single real person, sitting at a computer. Why will this person use the internet to find your product? What will they expect to find? If they do find your website, will they buy from you or will they just use you for information and buy somewhere else?

In most cases good search engine results will benefit you, but it pays to be realistic about how significant the benefit will be.

What Are Your Chances of Getting Listed?

Getting a basic listing isn't hard and you should be able to get at least a small presence in the main search engines. The question is how many actual visitors will result from your listing.

If you have something reasonably unique to offer, or if you are targeting a particular geographical region, your chances of getting visitors are fairly high. Most businesses could expect to attract at least a few visitors each day through search engines.

To get more than a few visitors per day (up to around a hundred) will take more effort but is still quite achievable.

If you are aiming to attract hundreds or thousands of visitors per day, you will need to have something a bit more special — either some very unique content or a very good optimization strategy.

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