A Hard-Hitting SEO Strategy is Critical For Your Online Success

By Sean Patrick

With nearly one in every four people on planet Earth now using the Internet, its growth has been nothing short of explosive since the webs inception in 1999. Indeed, worldwide growth of Internet usage is estimated at over 340% since 2000, with the biggest gains coming from the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.

So what does all of this mean? It means that nearly 1.6 billion people worldwide are surfing the web today, and a fair number of them are likely to be using the Internet to research products and ultimately, to buy them. Records show that in 2008, over $133 billion dollars were spent in America buying products online. Thats more revenue than international stalwarts like AT&T, IBM, or Bank of America were able to generate last year.

In order for your small business to get a piece of this $130 billion pie, you need to find different ways of promoting your website online and bringing hundreds of qualified visitors to it on a daily basis. If you're looking into paid advertising like pay-per-click (PPC), watch out - these campaigns could get extremely expensive and often times lead to campaigns shutting down right with the businesses that spend the money to run them!

Small businesses that want to maximize their web presence realize that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a much better resource over pay-per-click advertising. They might now know that SEO better be more than just keyword research and metatag improvements. SEO should focus on getting the maximum exposure possible from many different Internet resources.

These resources can be identified by a reputable and ethical SEO firm, and the goal will be to increase exposure and visibility for your website using a combination of:

Optimizing each and every individual page on your website. Lots of folks don't know this but website don't rank in the search engines for just the domain name - every single page of your site is available to rank - this means leveraging more pages and more keywords. It significantly increases visitor volume and ranking potential within the search engines.

Building back-links. When visitors come to your site by way of another link placed on a different web page, this not only increases your traffic but also helps your website rank higher in the search engines. An ethical SEO firm will work hard to secure back-link opportunities in a professional and organic way.

Understanding the Competition: Your business will find hidden ways of driving more traffic to its site by understanding what keywords the competition is going after - often times you will find keywords with little competition that have high-relevancy and "buying" potential. You can easily rank for these keywords since your competition missed them!

Social Media Marketing Services. Strategically harnessing the explosion in online social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc) will work to further expand the exposure your site enjoys.

Monthly Reporting. Comprehensive and timely reports are crucial to a good SEO campaign - without them you have no idea how far your site has come along!

Effective SEO companies should provide you with these tools that will further promote your business online and allow you to gain maximum exposure and awareness. Competition for sales is hard enough when times are good - and when the economy is shrinking, selecting an effective and economical SEO firm is an extremely important decision.

Thus far, in 2009, the pace for ecommerce (compared to 2008) is only off by about 5% - this is nothing compared to the double-digit decline of retail sales in the last 365 days!

In todays turbulent economic conditions, such a modest decline puts the ecommerce world ahead of most businesses. And with a properly managed SEO strategy, your small business could very well avoid participating in the current recession altogether. - 26221

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