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Having suggested why you might need SEO – again optimisation for the Brits out there and not optimization – a thought occured to me at about 5.00 this morning. OK I don’t claim ‘ownership’ as an original thought in SEO terms but .. I haven’t yet seen this as an example on other SEO pages, so try it out – and let me know if I may have an original!

In business we all have customers, simply put external and internal. If you haven’t heard that before here is an explanation:

Internal ‘customers’ are the people in your company or perhaps a partner / company that you provide your services too in order to deliver your company’s products or services.

while

External customers are those people that actually buy your company’s products or services.

So – how does that relate to my web site and SEO

Quite simple – if I use the fruit and veg shop analogy again. Now you have a web site you are ’selling’ another product – your web site and the information it contains. Just a little different from selling apples and pears, but the principle is still the same – a product is a product.

OK, so now we have to deal with that new product.

Dealing with the old ones is now virtually second nature. Someone comes into your shop and buys a product (hopefully more), pays for them and with good customer service comes back and becomes a regular customer.

But who is the customer for this new product? Firstly it’s the search engines, and then the people who visit your web site from them. A search engine has become your customer – the product they want from you is information.

Yes, a search engine is an external customer of yours and like all customers requires customer care. The only difference is that in ‘internet jargon’ the customer care a search engine needs is called Search Engine Optimisation (optimization for those who want to relace s with z).

Not convinced? Try treating your customers badly, see how many come back, how quickly your turnover falls.

No the search engines do not pay you money for your new product – well at least not directly, but indirectly …….. every visitor to your web site could be a physical customer who may spend money with you.

SEO is good customer care for search engines. Treat them well and they will treat you well.

SEO – search engine optimisation – sorry we are British so out goes ‘optimimization’ – is the active practice of making a web site friendly to increase the number of visitors the site receives from search engines.

Is it worth it?

Candidly – yes.

There are over 20 Billion web pages out there – as of March 2008 there were over 100.1 million websites. Of these 74% were commercial or other sites operating in the .com generic top-level domain. – and so far it is estimated that the search engines have indexed just under half of them – so there is a long way to go – it’s also a very large number so remember that. Think how difficult it is now to drive traffic to your web site, now imagine how much more difficult it is going to be when (and if) all web pages and web sites are indexed*.

The majority of web traffic is driven by the major commercial search engines – Yahoo!, MSN, Google & AskJeeves (although AOL gets nearly 10% of searches, their engine is powered by Google’s results). If your site cannot be found by search engines or your content cannot be put into their databases, you miss out on the incredible opportunities available to websites provided via the search engines. That is people who want what you have visiting your site.

Whether your site provides content, services, products or information, the search engines are the main way of getting visitors to your site.

Why do I need to carry out SEO?

If you accept that the “Googles” of the world are responsible for getting visitors to a web site you have to understand that they (the companies behind search engines) are businesses themselves.

At all times every business is looking for that competitive edge, the one thing that makes them different from their competitors. No doubt you are trying that in your business right now, even if you don’t think of it in that way.

In business you know what who your competitors are and what they are doing. You are always trying to be better, have that one thing that makes you different. That thing could be as “simple” as a fruit and veg shop having a better shop window display than their competitors. – no offence to fruit and veg shops their business is not simple and certainly their window dressing is not simple.

Think of the imapct that Google made when it started. It displayed your search results in a simple and easy way. Now every other Search Engine is trying to out do Google. Since it’s launch in 1998 – (yes Google is only 11 years old yet it seems to have been with us as long as computers have existed) – Google has grown from a garage based operation to one that today handles over 50% of all internet searches and over 73% of internet searches in the USA.

So – do I need SEO?

Search engines are always working towards improving their technology to crawl* the web more deeply and return increasingly relevant results to users – potentially your customers.

This means they are always looking for ways to improve their business – just like you. Their business is making ‘results’ available to thier customers in the easiest way.

SEO is really about making sure that the search engines can easilly deliver their product – your information – to their users.

As I pointed out earlier the online environment is becoming increasingly competitive. As time goes on those companies who perform SEO will have a decided advantage in visitors and customers.

— Footnotes —

*Search engines run automated programs, called “bots” or “spiders” that use the hyperlink structure of the web to “crawl” the pages and documents that make up the World Wide Web.

Once a page has been crawled, it’s contents can be “indexed” – stored in a giant database of documents that makes up a search engine’s “index”. These indexes are highly managed, so that when you type in a search request thay can sort through billions of documents in fractions of a second and provide you with a result.

The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect
Sir Tim Berners Lee (founder of the World Wide Web)

The above quote is one that is frequently wheeled out by web developers who claim to be into web accessibility. If you search Google for “accessible web designers” it appears that almost every site you will see uses this quote from Sir Tim Berners Lee yet it comes from the mid 1990’s. The web has grown out of all proportion since.

In the early naughties (2000’s) I wrote several papers for educational publications on internet / e-learning / e-portfolio accessibilty. Today when I re-read them I see how much has developed since, yet ……… too many people and specifically companies are still ignoring the basic principles of the internet.

The internet or web – depending on your pereferences – is about mass communication, indeed the internet or web is the only tool that can cross country boundaries influencing people thousands of miles from where you are sitting right now. Why then do so many people ignore 25% of those people?

Yes I said 25% of people.

One of the governing aspects of the internet was that all users could have access to the information available on it. Yet even today most people ignore it. From a business view point that is even more appealing.

Imagine this – you have a fruit and veg shop (yes fruit & veg again but I use them as an example of a shop that we all love and use) do you activly turn customers away? – of course not.

Like every business you depend on your customers, they give you your income, they allow you to put food on the table, buy new clothes etc.

If someone comes into your shop and asks for help you give it, if someone comes into you shop who is obviously struglling with reading your lables/price tages etc. you (and or your staff) volunteer help. You will read / explain the label so that person can understand.

Yet when it comes to your website (generally) you don’t. Never fear, you are not alone, virtually every company – yes virtually EVERY company who has a web site activly turns customers away!

It is all too easy for us to ignore this very important aspect of web design because our web site designer doesn’t mention it – or (even worse) doesn’t understand it.

Ignoring dubious figures (i.e. China states that ony 6.34% of it’s poulation have a disbability – the Second China National Sample Survey on Disability) one in four – 1 in 4 or 25% – of your customers / potential customers have, or know somebody who has some form of disability.

Years ago I heard a phrase – the digital divide. At the time it was used as an example of being on broadband or not. Now I think that was an incorrect inturpritation.

The “Digital Divide” is really about the many people who cannot or do not have access to the new technologies and the opportunities they bring. These people – “socially excluded”, in the current jargon – stand on the wrong side of the “digital divide”.

Imagine you can access those people currently beyond the “Digital Divide” think of it in simple terms – your web site is seen by:

• 100 people or 125 people
• 1000 people or 1250 people.
• 10000 people or 12500 people.
• 100000 people or 125000 people.

Which would you rather have?

Like every business you depend on your customers, they give you your income, they allow you to put food on the table, buy new clothes etc.

Take the opportunity before anybody else; bridge the “Digital Divide” – become accessible.