Most small business owners realize that, in today’s world, having a website is mandatory if they stand a chance of survival. However, many business owners set up their websites, but are then disappointed when they don’t attract the number of visitors they were hoping for. All too often, it can seem like the idea of ‘online marketing’ is a pipe dream, because surely customers would materialize if they were out there searching on the Internet?
Well, the truth is that the phrase ‘build it and they will come’ does not apply online. In the early days of the Internet, businesses could just set up websites and be found easily by customers, but the modern online world is far more competitive. Now, due to the sheer number of websites available, search engines have become far more selective about what they display on the first page.
Websites that fail to observe best SEO (search engine optimization) practices will be penalized and banished to the bottom of the search results. For a business, this can be catastrophic because it means that their competitors will get all the online traffic that they could have captured and converted into customers. Having expertise in SEO is, therefore, crucial today, because otherwise you will be ignored and overlooked in favor of businesses that are more online savvy.
There are a lot of different elements to SEO, which most business owners do not understand. SEO often involves content production and link building, which is rather time-consuming. Moreover, attempting to incorporate SEO into your website can be a fool’s errand, because as fast as you implement certain tactics, the search engines change their algorithms rendering all your efforts redundant. This is why enlisting the service of a professional consultant, like The Miami SEO Bitch http://miamiseobitch.com/, is a sensible idea.
A professional consultant will conduct a thorough analysis of your website, to see whether it is built in a way that allows search engine bots to identify what it is about. Much of this relates to the keywords present on your website. If your site is not built correctly, the consultant will make the necessary structural changes to ensure that it is ‘SEO friendly’.
The fees for this service varies, depending on what needs doing and whether you use the consultant for a one-off job, or for ongoing work. Because search engines tend to favor websites with fresh, original content, you might want to hire a consultant on a retainer, so they can produce this for you to save you time. This also applies to social media posts, which have become increasingly important for businesses given that huge numbers of people use social media on a daily basis.