Quickbooks, Bookkeeping and Accounting Blog

Many companies spent time and money building websites over the last few years only to find they did not acquire any new business as a result of their new website.  Consequently, they have given up on the Web as a source of new business at exactly the time when they should be focused on it. 

Because the age of a website is an important factor for search engine optimization (SEO), many of these essentially abandoned websites could come up very well in searches with a little bit of effort. For this reason, if you are sitting on a website that you haven’t really thought about in years, I recommend starting to think about it again.

The first thing you should do is to identify keywords people might use in a search engine to find services you provide.  For example, if you business is providing QuickBooks services to companies in Boise, Idaho, then you might consider “Boise QuickBooks”.  Then do a search on this term in any major search engine and see what comes up. Look at the sites and ask yourself if there is any reason the companies that show up should show up ahead of your site. If there isn’t, then it is time to think about how to get your site to show up.

The easiest and first thing to do to optimize your site for search engines is to rewrite your text to use your keywords repeatedly (in the example above, use “Boise QuickBooks” repeatedly). The next, and most important, thing is to find other related sites that are willing to link to your site using your keywords. For some keywords, simply doing this will be enough. If it’s not, at least you have made a good start and will be in a good position to do more if you so choose.
 
Finally, if you aren’t getting new customers through your website, then you might be missing out on an opportunity. Using search engine optimization (SEO), it is possible to drive potential customers to your website, and thereby grow your business. I don’t think every company should spend time or money on SEO, but I think almost every company should at least think about it and whether or not it will be important for them over the long run.