A funny thing happened on the way to the web site. When I set up the very first version of this web site – over 10 years ago – I wanted it solely as an online brochure and portfolio. It was a place where people could go to see our work once they had already heard about us. I was not expecting to get new business through the web.When I first installed analytics on the site, the results were consistent with that view: most were arriving at the site as the result of a direct search. Search engine traffic was pretty small. I wasn’t worried.
Fast forward to today. I knew the proportion of web traffic on our site was changing, but I was recently surprised to see that over 75% of all traffic to the imaginecreative.com web site is through search engines! Not only that, but the web site is now a source of new business for us.
Two things have happened in those years. First, buying habits have changed dramatically. People now make more buying decisions based on what they see on the web. And these are for high-end purchases, not just a book on Amazon or Indigo. The face-to-face purchasing paradigm is shifting.
Second, our web site has had to adapt to that reality. Search engine optimization (SEO for short) is a reality in the world of web site design and development today. What have we done? Two years ago we switched the site to a content management system. This ensures that the site is friendly to search engines. Even the URL for each page is potentially infused with key words. We also ensure pages have appropriate meta tags and that pages are written with the appropriate keywords included.
Daily, I still encounter people who do not have a web site, or figure that the site they set up many years ago are still working for them. I would suggest to them that they are not. And I have a first-hand example to prove it. By the way, if you don’t already know, adding analytics to your web site is easy and the service itself is free. Contact your web developer to learn more.
What do you think? Join the conversation and leave a comment.