Lately on the web, I have been seeing a lot of attractive website designs in the holistic health category. Unfortunately for these beautiful and often useful websites, they are on page 4 or 5 of Google and other search engines. Studies have shown that people are very unlikely to click on a search link even 3 pages deep. In order for you to compete effectively for business, your site needs to come up on the first page. There is evidence that most internet searches culminate in the searcher clicking on one of the first 3 links on the search results page.
Why is your professionally looking website not attracting more business? The reason is that the designer who created your site was just that, a designer. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a whole seperate field to some designers. Many of the sites I have seen are built with an old-school table layout, or are made primarily of flash or javascript. Flash (animation) and javascript (making “calls” to the web server to provide interactivity) are great if used sparingly, but they are not well indexed by search engines. I have seen websites that are completely made of these two types computer code, and there is literally NO indexable information anywhere!
To grok how sites get on top of google searches, it is helpful to have a basic understanding of the algorithm used to determine a sites search placement. One of the reasons Google is so popular, is that it attempts to weed through the useless, irrelevant information out there on the web. It determines a site’s relevancy to the search terms by analyzing a few different factors. It looks at the information architecture of your website as well as the text and other content of your site for prominence and density of keywords.To take advantage of this new knowledge, you should make sure that your website is correctly coded.
In addition to the variables I mentioned earlier, there is one other very important factor. It’s content. Content that is useful, unique, and draws the user’s interest is what you want. Websites that are simply a digital brochure aren’t going to be well-trafficked. Think about the sites you visit on the internet. You are looking for easy to find information, an easeful user experience, and novelty, if I am not mistaken. That is also what other potential visitors to your website are looking for. Give them what they want- content is king, or queen if you prefer. When they find it on your site, they are going to call you, or at least bookmark your website, which will create an inbound link.
Why are inbound links important? Google’s algorithm takes into account the number and quality (pagerank and relevance) of inbound links to your website, as part of the way it develops a picture of your site’s popularity. It also looks at the number and quality of outbound links, as a measure of how potentially useful your website is to visitors. A campaign to build good inbound links, through online networking with other relevant websites (link exchange), to social media and social bookmarking, should be undertaken immediately after a website goes online. This campaign needs to be continued and refreshed at periodic intervals, just as you should update your website regularly (another variable in the Google algorithm).
Many SEO firms charge a lot of money. A good percentage of them will charge you for an assessment of your website. Holistic Web Design is currently offering a free SEO evaluation for your website. Call us today for a free consultation, or drop us an email.
Don’t let your beautiful web design go unseen any longer!
Tags: beautiful website design, holistic medicine, holistic website design, search engine optimization, web design
