Business, in so many ways, is like a sport. It takes years of learning to master, never guarantees success and must be constantly worked at. Another similarity between sports and business is that failure never means the end of the line – it merely signals rest, like a pit-stop in a race. Every step of failure can be a route to success, both in sports and business, as long as one analyses the reasons behind the failure and charts out a plan for the future to avoid the initial shortcomings. Many sports-persons have made illustrious comebacks from injuries or huge failures to establish their legacy in the game and the world of business is replete with just as many tales.
Business owners are constantly at work, toiling to ensure better qualities of production, lower costs, higher sales and bigger marketplaces. Marketing their products, services or companies has perpetually been one of the biggest priorities for business owners and its importance has only increased in the lieu of expanding markets and smarter consumers. In recent times, one of the most prominent ways that businesses have thrived to reach more consumers is Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
What is SEO
Search Engine Optimization is the process of increasing the amount and type of traffic a website receives, i.e., to ensure that not only does a website receive a higher number of visitors but the quantity also translates into quality – higher sales. The term was likely popularized by Brian Clay around 1997 as search engines came into the fore and started dominating the scene of the World Wide Web. It included any methods that website owners might resort to in order to control traffic and assumed importance as customers frequently tuned their queries and wants to search engines as the Internet grew stronger and spread.
An important distinction is that SEO is used to define the alteration of unpaid results (also called organic results) as opposed to means of paid promotion. Another important distinction to be made is between SEO, which targets markets at the national and international levels, and local search engine optimization, a process that is aimed at enhancing the website’s performance in a local geographical area. SEO makes use of various methods like cross-linking, keywords, meta descriptions and content marketing to project the company onto a larger platform.
Ways of Dealing with SEO Failure
Oftentimes, the methods employed by business owners as part of their SEO plans fail to bring about the desired results. At such a point of time, it is important to remember that any problem that might be causing the lag can be found out and remedied with a few useful internet tools. It would be best, however, to take some customary steps:
- Ensuring stays: The failure of a SEO campaign does not necessarily mean that the website’s positioning on search engines has not been able to register visits or clicks. It can often imply that the visitors of the site, unimpressed by the page, decided to not foray further into the website. In lieu of this, it would be prudent of the owner to work on the corresponding page and ensure that it leads to further clicks or sales, i.e., a higher staying time.
- Mobile Friendliness: The recent past has seen an unprecedented rise in the use of smartphones, with the devices encompassing functions earlier performed by telephones, computers, radios, televisions and even marketplaces. In adherence to this, Google, too, has sought to analyze the mobile friendliness of a site. Any business owner who seeks to employ SEO must look to consolidate on this aspect and work on the feasibility of their website on a mobile browser.
- Information Architecture: This means the structuring and organization of pages on one’s website. This encompasses correspondence between one’s most visited page and one’s most useful pages. SEO experts recommend having a simple information architecture, i.e., having any important pages within direct or simple reach of the homepage. It also includes adding more cross-links to important pages on other pages so as to highlight and enhance its importance.
- Page Speed: Often, certain issues bog the site from working at optimal speed. In a world as fast-paced as the one we reside in, slow pages or websites frustrate visitors, leading to shorter stays and eventually, lesser visits. Owners must take special care in removing any hindrance to the speed of the website.
- Understanding the audience: A business owner can employ numerous SEO measures to increase their sales but any method in the world will not work if the measures do not take into consideration the tastes and preferences of the audience. Before employing any techniques, any business owner should properly analyze their audience and chart out what type of products, services, website and marketing would be effective in satisfying the audience’s wants.
Hence, if one’s SEO techniques have initially failed, a little bit of research and prompt action can easily register the proceedings right. However, if you feel that the SEO of a business us not your cup of tea, it is always advisable to leave it to the experts – a dedicated team of experienced personnel at MAG Studious, for example.
