A very common misconception a lot of people have is that if they build a website, people will find it just because its there. 

I can guarantee you that the businesses who are listed on the first page of Google for many search terms are not there by some happy accident.  They are there because they've invested time, effort and money to be there.

I'm not talking about the sponsored links on the right hand side (that's a whole other blog topic) - I'm referring to the organic results.  The ones in the main section of the Google results page.

They didn't pay Google to be there.  But it did cost.  Here's why.

Google is a complex beast.  Google's singleminded objective (other than making money) is to return the most relevant and useful results to its user.  Its a pretty tough gig  to trawl through the millions of sites on the internet to find the websites that are most relevant websites for you.  So Google has built the mother of all 'algorithms' to tackle the task.  They feed the gigantor-algorithm with all of the things that they think are signs that a website is relevant and useful.  It runs this list of checks over your website to judge whether it should show your website to the person searching or not.

For example, the Google algorithm says that if you have lots of other sites linking to yours (or referencing your site), you must be popular and therefore their user would be happy to be given your site in their search results.  There are hundreds of indicators like this that Google uses to pass judgement on the worthiness of your site to be shown in search results.

Oh, and top it all off, they keep constantly change the algorithm.  So what's hot today, according to Google, could turn cold over night.  Credit to Google though, they do have a good reason to do this.  It stops people from learning  the tricks and playing the system.  If everyone knew how the algorithm worked then Google would very soon fail at giving good results to searchers.  You'd be served up porn sites when all you want to do is buy a new lawnmower.

However, there are a number of important things we do know about how Google works that help us to improve the chances of your website being found by people looking for your type of business.  Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an art and a science.  The activities involved in Search Engine Optimisation are often time consuming and takes some expertise.  That's why I'm saying it's not free - you need an expert and you need to pay them for their time.

If you are in an industry where competition is hot, it will take more effort and therefore more time and money to achieve prominence in Google.  In less competitive or unique markets, you may get yourself on the first page just by following the simple rules of website design and website content writing - lucky you!

So as you can see, in some cases, if you build it (right) they will come, but in many situations it will take a bit more effort that just whacking up a site to get the traffic you need.

Talk to us about getting more traffic to your website.