Search Engine Optimization continues to move at an amazing rate, each search engine will continually adjust its’ algorithm in order to give its’ searchers the best results that it can.
For our part, we the SEO’s are continuing to prepare our websites so that they get in the way of existing search traffic. There always have been two opposite views of this; firstly that we are unfairly manipulating the results, and secondly that we are fairly manipulating the results.
In truth, if SEO didn’t exist to adjust websites so that they’re readable by the search engines, then the search engine results you would get a lot less organised and all over the place really. Search engine optimizers are necessary to ensure that the most qualified websites rise to the top. 9 out of 10 web designers don’t know how to make a website rank well in search engine results. They tend to miss all the key on-page criteria that SEs look for and so a well built, all-singing all-dancing expensive website will most of the time be doomed to float around among the masses of other websites that will never be found, or to sit in a pay-per-click listing for the rest of its life.
We see clients on a very regular basis who’ve been sold flashy and expensive websites as the answer to their prayers, when really it barely has any use at all. Its very common for us to see clients who wish they had spent a lot less on the design so that they had the money to spend on optimising their site instead
Common sense will tell you that there’s no point in having a website that no one can find. Even in these harsh economic times as turnover is dwindling and profits are all but gone, the forward thinking website owners will look to increase their market share by either starting an SEO campaign or adding new keywords to their current campaign. There are still buyers out there to be had, but they are simply shopping more cautiously and in fewer numbers, but what you as a site owner, you need to ask yourself is, are you going to be proactive and move forward to take your share of the market, or will you hang back and end up as another failure statistic?
The traditional forms of trade are suffering from the online revolution while online sales rose dramatically in just one year. From Christmas 2007 to Christmas 2008, online sales rose by 25% and the companies that are benefiting from this are those that move with the new technology and evolve to the needs of its users.
It is unfortunate but in years to come, high streets and retail parks will not exist. More and more shops are being used as fitting rooms for an online buy later on. Its like were shooting ourselves in the foot really because when the shops are gone, all we will have is the Internet to make our purchases on, which will take the experience out of shopping entirely.
SEO will be driven by retailers needing to save money and increase footfall to both their bricks and clicks shops. It will be an interesting year in which I think we will see some more household names join, Woolworths, MFI, etc on the scrapheap. The big question is……. will you do enough to protect your market share in 2009?
