If you’re a client of Unleashing Potential, then you’ve most likely already come across my passion and enthusiasm for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
And here is the reasons why.
When a potential client first engages with us, we offer a consultation to discover what the potential client is wanting to achieve by spending their hard earned dollars in some “website” for their business. When I ask the question, why do they want a website?, in almost all cases eventually the true reason comes out. The true reason for business owners as you would expect is for the website to at the end of the day – make the business money. Now for different businesses how that’s done is usually different, it could mean getting the phone to ring more often or to sell something directly online.
Business owners realise that the landscape of marketing has changed since ten years ago, and is still continuing to rapidly change. However, I do come across the majority of business owners who have a some what misunderstood belief that creating them a website (and only a website) will suddenly explode their sales leads or e-commerce transactions. For a lucky few these days that might happen – right niche, no competition etc.
But in the real world, just by creating a website doesn’t guarantee you instant success. Far from it. Think about it for a second in a real sense. Why would it? Why would your newly created website be a hit over the hundreds, probably thousands of other websites out there offering the same or similar things? How would people know about your website in the first place?
The analogy I use to bring the online world into a more tangible real world scenario is that a website (no matter if you are selling directly on the website or if you are a service business wanting to obtain more sales leads) is like a brick and mortar shop. What you are paying for in designing and building the website is equivalent to designing and building your shop – only in most cases much much cheaper.
However, the difference in the real world is that when you design and build your shop, that shop sits in a physical location, that physical location will probably have traffic going past your shop – foot traffic or car traffic. You will also be paying for that traffic in your lease or value of the building, as if there is more traffic going past your shop the bigger value to that location. A shop in downtown Queen st is going to cost more rent that a shop in Helensville, everything else being equal.
People are used to this concept. The scenario above is normal and well understood. However, I find that most people when thinking about online websites, this concept disappears out of their heads.
Creating a website online, its like designing and building a shop in a middle of a paddock – or a similar place with NO traffic. If people know of the shop you have built, then you may get some people going there. But without people walking or drive past regularly like on a busy road, you and I both know that shop isn’t going to be as busy or as successful if it was placed in a more suitable location such as on Queen st. People don’t fully click with this when it comes to online –and why they don’t boggles my mind. Make perfect sense in a bricks and mortar world, so why don’t people give online the same consideration. If you are looking to market your business online with a website, you MUST consider how you are going to get traffic coming to your website. If you don’t and you believe your website will still be a success, your nuts.
Now there a various ways you can get traffic coming to your website. SEO is one of them. In my belief SEO is the most powerful way and most cost effective way to do this, in most cases.
