Business Advice

SEO: The Silver Bullet For Small Businesses

10/06/09

Small businesses are embracing the internet in increasing numbers as cost-conscious customers go online to exploit the savings, choice and convenience it offers.

In fact, BT Business is currently receiving 1,000 registrations a week for new domain names and websites as companies try to tap into the internet's global audience.

However, many are selling themselves short because they have not designed, developed and maintained their sites properly so that they can be easily and quickly found by customers using search engines such as Google.

The stark reality is that some SMEs are squandering money on sites that are going nowhere - like buying a...

...new car and then refusing to put fuel in it. The vehicle may look good on the drive, but it serves very little purpose.

Businesses must realise it is not enough to design an attractive website and just let it take care of itself. On the contrary, they have to develop coherent web strategies if they want to exploit the commercial potential offered by cyberspace.

The good news is that there are basic Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) techniques that will make them far more visible to online consumers, who often don't get past the first page of results after a Google or Yahoo search.

Central to this is the need for websites to be designed, built, maintained and updated with memorable and meaningful content that will be detected by search engines and, as a result, seen by more customers.

However, a recent BT Business survey of more than 70,000 websites found alarming and damaging weaknesses in the websites of many UK SMEs. So much so that 13 per cent actually rated their own sites as "very poor".

Only one in 3,000 were using keywords - relevant words or phrases that a customer might use to find a company's products or services on the internet.... continued on page two >

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