Search Engine Optimization has come a long way. It was almost 13 years ago when ‘alpha.google.com’ first entered the World Wide Web.
Alpha.google.com
I don’t know if the term Search Engine Optimization or SEO even existed. Search Engines were created and expanded by our need to find information. More than a decade later, Search Engine Optimization is a requirement if you want to show up online.
The web is still wild; I wonder how many businesses had phone lines 100 years ago after the phone was first introduced. Corporate websites didn’t really take off until the last 90’s so we aren’t even 20 years from the introduction of a corporate website.
Yellow Pages To Reviews
15 years ago, if you wanted to find a company to provide a service, you looked up the category in the Yellow Pages, and if it was 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM in most places you could call the company and ask questions. Today we call that a Search Engine and the corporate information is now available 24 hours a day, seven days a week on the World Wide Web. After you gathered your information, you might ask a friend or colleague who they use for whatever product or service you were interested in. Today those are called Ratings and Reviews, often times submitted by people you may not know, but trust none the less. You can reach out to your social network and ask the same question. I was at a conference recently, and someone tweeted out a question about a book they were thinking about buying. The author of the book saw the tweet come through and told the person to “Buy The Book!” How’s that for marketing.
Work In Progress
In the early days of Search Engine Optimization and Search Marketing it was a race to see who could write landing pages, go out and acquire links, and who could figure out the early release algorithms in order to show up at the top of the Search Engines. 10 years later, we are still doing the same thing, but the Search Engines are smarter, and some of the old tricks still work, just not as often and not for as long. In the process of learning how to work with the Search Engines we have improved our websites, messages, information and ultimately the Search Engine Result Pages.
We have improved our website fundamentals (quick what’s your web page title? Hint – It better be your most important keyword!). We improved our content, and made it more beneficial to our visitors. We have improved our backlinks and our backlinking policies to include relevant links that are consistent with our website, content and message. The result is a better Search Engine and better websites. So what’s next, what’s on the horizon, and what can we do to ultimately increase our sales, our users and our brand exposure?
Conversion Rate Optimization
It’s time to start putting the same effort into customer acquisition as we do to increasing our traffic. SearchRankings.Net is getting ready to put the finishes touches on 2011. We are grateful once again for all of our wonderful clients, partners and team, and we have experienced our 5th straight year of growth. As we get ready to wind down 2011 and prepare for 2012, we are going to start to move in the direction of Conversion Rate Optimization.
We recently did an analysis with one of our clients, and we were able to determine that if traffic remained flat for the year, but we worked on strategies that would increase our conversion rate by 0.4% we could increase year over year sales by 25%! Conversion Rate Optimization requires a detailed analysis of your Key Website Pages, and your whole customer / user flow. You should start with a review of the content, the placement of important on-page elements, and an understanding of the call to action on all pages. It’s not easy, but SEO wasn’t easy a few years ago either. As you get ready to wind down your 2011, I hope it was a great year. As you begin to look at 2012, it might be time to look at the next level.
Happy Holidays from all of us at SearchRankings.Net, and Happy New Year!
