how has SEO'ing helped your business?

Try posting your request on the SEO thread here http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=37153

Hello,

As web developers, we have often advised our clients on such issues.

The key factor that you have to consider is the return you are likely to get on any investment in a website, whether that is to build the site or to increase its visibility on the web.

It is very nice to have a top listing in Google but it would make no sense to spend a large amount of money to get that if your target market is local and the majority of people finding you are unable to do business with you. If you do have a very localised target market, it is not difficult at all to get good listings with a geographical searc (e.g. storage kent)

Assuming that you do need country-wide or even world wide exposure, then SEO will help as long as you use a reputable company that can deliver what it promises to. Many web developers, like us, have companies that they know and trust to achieve results. As I said, on another thread, achieving good listings in the larger search engines like Google can take a few months and, due to the amount of work involved to do it properly, without using any tactics that may get your site thrown out of the search engines, is not cheap. You should be considering a cost of between £2000 and £3000 to get top listings. More than likely that will be more than you spend on getting your website built.

It is also essential to ensure that your website is well designed and easy to navigate. There is no point spending large amounts to get people there for them to take one look and hit their back button because it looks cheap or they can't find what they want.

The principles of optimisation are the same for e-commerce and non-e-commerce sites. The sites selling online obviously see more immediate return on their investment when their sales increase in line with the increased number of visitors but there are clearly benefits to all companies to attract more visitors as long as those new visitors are targeted with the correct key words or phrases.

Our experience has been that most businesses don't really want to invest the necessary funds to get good listings, relying on luck rather than making things happen. Those that do certainly see the benefits.

Hope that helps a little.

Good balanced post Paul.

I wish more web design companies realized the importance of SEO,and that it needs to be incorporated at the very early stages of design work.

In fact I suspect that web design companies who do not take onboard SEO will fall by the wayside,as the public becomes more aware of the power of SEO in online retail and services.

Earl