For most of us, our websites are an important way to find new business or activity. We create them hoping that people looking for the solutions that we provide will find us on the internet and then buy from us or contact us for more. However, this may be one of the greatest challenges we face—getting found by these web surfers. But there is one thing that you can do, more than anything else, that will help your site find its right audience.
Back to basics
More and more websites in the last few years have been employing smart SEO strategies to help propel them to the top of the search listings. Years ago, only the few websites who knew how to do this saw dramatic rises in their listings. Now, the competition is much more fierce. So what should you do?
It’s time to get back to basics. How do you handle your existing competition offline? More than likely, you focus on your unique selling proposition, or what sets you apart. You use that as part of your marketing message to attract your target audience to you.
The same applies online. If you figure out what sets you apart from your online competition, you have a better chance of finding just the people you’re looking for…and who are looking for you. This will help you gain a healthier audience.
The most important thing
We’ve been seeing trends in search engines that the previous “silver bullets” of SEO that you may have heard pushed by some SEO experts, like using just the right keywords or getting the most inbound links, just don’t work as well as they used to. It’s not that these are unimportant; it’s simply that the competition is tougher.
If you want to have your website perform well in search results time after time, the most important thing you can do is create a website that is useful for your target audience and provides unique information. Matt Cutts, a Google employee and SEO blogger, said, “Most of the right choices in SEO come from asking, ‘What’s the best thing for the user?’” This is consistent with what the top SEO experts have said: Make a useful website for your audience, and you will begin to see positive results.
A useful and unique website succeeds on two fronts. First, it provides value and use to your potential customers, and that makes them want to become paying customers. Second, it also makes your site easier to find. Providing great value gives other websites a reason to link to your site, and that, plus your unique content, helps raise your site in search engine rankings.
Focusing on your uniqueness and giving your customers what they want will ultimately help you succeed online. Not only will you stand out from the competition, but you will also convert your online visitors into customers more easily.
