What is Search Engine Optimization?Unfortunately, for many in the industry, it’s a license to print money. By far the majority of website owners out there have little or no idea what it is and most certainly no idea on what to do about it. They hear the expression more and more these days, and have often been convinced that they need it. This puts them in a very vulnerable position. Taking advantage of this problem has given rise to a plethora of charlatans and “snake oil” salesmen who make absurd promises and take large amounts of money from unsuspecting clients but failing to produce any appreciable results.
Here’s the problem.Suppose you own Bert’s Muffler Repair Shop in Albany New York. Suppose now, that a potential customer needs a muffler replaced on their car and is looking for a suitable place to call. He types “muffler repair albany" in the search box and waits for the results. Now, you want to be in the list of results presented, and as close as possible to the top of the page. I just typed those search words moments ago and I got 188,000 possible sites according to Google’s report at the top of the page. There were over 200 pages of listings. Where is Bert’s Muffler Repair? Don’t go looking for it, I just made it up, but the point is that if someone needs their muffler fixed, they’ll likely never find you. They will likely find someone to help them long before they come across your site.
This opened up a whole industry of those who promise to get your site closer to the top. Some will even promise to get you “top of page 1” or “first page ranking” in a few days or weeks. Nonsense. Unless there are only a handful of competitors in your industry, getting good rankings with search engines is a simple matter of making sure that your site has no “road blocks” to discourage the search engines, and to make sure that each and every page is properly optimized to give you every “legal” advantage in the book.
If you really want to know the ins and outs of SEO, I encourage you to do some of your own Internet research on the subject. Suffice it to say, it is very important, but equally important that you have a website designer who does know what it is and understands how to optimize your site without having you incur the National Deficit in the process. Ask him to explain to you in simple terms what he will do and what the expected result will be. Due to the largely theoretical nature of the process, be leery of those that promise you the sun, moon and stars.
