Business Tips: Business Portal

Monday, July 14, 2008

Business Portal

Why you need search engine optimisation (SEO) before you build your website

Posted: 13 Jul 2008 04:33 AM CDT

Most business owners are now aware of search engine optimisation and a good percentage are considering using a SEO consultant in the next few months. However this might be too late.

Most websites have a lot of problems that cause them to rank badly in the search engines. Some of these sites were developed years ago and the owners are not interested in promoting them or don’t have the budget. Other sites are brand new and have so many search engine optimisation issues that the site barely ranks for it’s own name. These sites probably cost thousands.

Imagine if you are a the proud owner or a new car and somebody comes along to explain that if you want to drive over 30 miles per hour you need to pay an extra $5000. That is the same as trying to explain to somebody who just paid for an all singing all dancing website that they won’t ever get any traffic from Google.

The key with SEO is that it needs to be integrated into the website right from the design stage and probably even before the designer is brought in. A good SEO consultant will be able to produce an exact road map of how the site should be designed and what each page should do.

If you bring in a consultant to advise on search engine optimisation after your designer has finished then the designer is likely to have to do a lot more work making the cost of the site much higher.

The moral of this is that if you are thinking about SEO make sure you hire a consultant before the site is launched rather than after.