If your website is having trouble generating business for you, it may be that people who are looking for your product are not finding you. The most common way that we seek out new shops, restaurants and other businesses that we might be interested in is Google – so making yourself easier to find there is a good start.

 

SEO (search engine optimisation) is essentially the art of making your website easier to find – typically by increasing your ranking for Google searches about your product. This will mean that people who want your product will find your website – and, hopefully, buy from you.

Your rankings are increased by making your website more user friendly and by link building. Making the site user friendly would involve things like regularly updating or posting new content, having a version of the site for mobile phones and making sure that it can cope with large numbers of users. You should also, obviously, have it designed well so that people want to look at it and find out more.

This stuff can be done by yourself if you’re good with computers and have a lot of time on your hands. Otherwise, get a professional in. The other half, link building, will definitely require help if you don’t have a LOT of spare time– which you shouldn’t if you are running a business.

 

Link building means that you post lots of different articles on various websites linking back to yours. The more popular the website you post your article on, the better – and the more different articles the better. You will also need to have the links made from specific keywords.

Working out which keywords to target is another ordeal. The premise is simple – work out what people who want something like what you sell are typing, and target that. However, the most common keywords also have the most competition among your competitors, so you will find it very hard to rank well for them.

Being very specific is a way to make sure you rank for at least some words. Using your geographic area is a good way to avoid competition with people who are further away from you, while still capturing the people who will come to your store. A strong combination is “industry + suburb”, while you can also target “specific product + region (or suburb)” for each of your products, and each suburb that can reasonably get to your store.

It is incredibly difficult to do all this right, however, so it is best to get experts to do it for you.