One of the areas on which we are currently concentrating with many of our clients is Search Engine Optimization. Having developed over 500 websites, Mercury has a large number of clients that have existing sites.  Many clients, especially those with older sites, are asking, "Why aren’t we getting more traffic?".

There is no canned response to that question as each site has its own set of reasons as to why it is or isn’t generating traffic. First of all, the clients that we host all have available to them one of the most advanced statistics programs available. This is where anyone should start to determine what is happening on their site. You can look back and compare months of activity to see the trends that have occurred. If your trends are going in the wrong direction, in other words you are gaining less traffic each month, then you will need to gain some knowledge as to what can be done to correct this.

Researching the Internet about proper Search Engine Optimization techniques is certainly an option. This will likely gain you some knowledge of what has occurred and possibly some ideas and general information on how you might improve your results. I can assure you one thing.  You will find an enormous amount of information, much of which will be difficult for anyone other that a Web specialist to understand. This is why there are companies such as ours that offer programs and services to guide and assist website clients with their traffic generation initiatives. Everyone needs to understand this not a case of "If you build it they will come", as I can assure you they probably will not.

Proper search engine optimization starts with the design and development of the site and the content that is included in the pages of the site. However, that is only the beginning. You need to continually promote your site both online and offline. Online, you need to gain as many links from sites with relevance to yours.  The more sites with relevance to your particular field of expertise or industry that have outgoing links to yours, the higher your relevance becomes to the search engines when a keyword or phrase that is contained on your site is queried. Editing of content to adjust for keywords and phrases must be an ongoing process.  All offline marketing done by your organization needs to include the address of your website. If you can continually work on these issues, your site will most likely achieve better results. To achieve great results, a much more ongoing concentration of effort will be needed.

I have had many meetings with both new and existing clients all of whom I ask, "Have you ever looked at your web statistics?". The answer is usually that they have not. Most clients don’t consider this as an ongoing marketing element that requires their attention. If that is the case, your site will eventually become stagnant and begin losing traffic. At Mercury, we have instituted a program with our clients that begins with the agreement that we will meet several times throughout the year to review their site statistics, discuss offline marketing and then determine what can be done to improve the amount of traffic to their website. The alternative to engaging in some kind of effort such as we provide and failing to plan how to continually improve your search engine ranking, greatly increases the probablility that you might someday be unhappy with the effectiveness of your website.