While last week we touched the topic of corporate online reputation management, this week we’re going to focus on a more technical topic called “search engine optimization” and why it’s so important to understand it.

So here we go:

I guess you are familiar with the fact that Google has become the most used search engine in the world with far over 40% market share in and over 1 billion searches submitted daily.

What you may be wondering about is why your company’s website does not show up on the search results for certain search terms and what you can do to influence this to show up before your competitors.

The practice involved here is referred to as search engine optimization, short SEO. Actually it is not a practice but more of a science that relies on the try and error principle.

A lot of search engine specialists have evolved from nowhere and proclaimed to have understood Google and their algorithms, which is partially true.

Only partially because a lot of them are complete idiots who will try to draw money out of your pocket for doing close to nothing in regards to making your company appear first on the Google search result for the query of your companies name.

This is complete bullshit because if you submit an explicit search for your company name on any search engine you have to show up first.

If not, you have seriously done something wrong choosing your web design firm who should have created the site in a search engine friendly manner.

Search engine optimization means understanding Google and learning by doing because their search methods are almost as secret as the recipe for Coca Cola.

If Google were to reveal their algorithms and the search techniques they use it would not only diminish their market position but also open the gates for everyone to influence search results, which would have a disastrous outcome.

So why should you optimize your website for Google and co.?

Simple: the return of investment (ROI) of your website increases with the amount of business you draw from it.

This requires you to have a certain amount of visitors to it, which will convert from prospects to leads to business, which consequence means more business generated from it. And hey, you have already invested lots of money into the design of the site itself, so why not make this investment worthwhile?

While we’re at it: you should immediately dispose of the thought that you will be on the first search result for every term you wish to have. It’s not going to happen simply because there are other competitors of yours on the web who will have had a similar idea and it’s going to be hard and cost intensive to replace their positioning with your own.

You should rather seek innovative ways to reposition yourself for search terms, which are not as frequently used, but therefore increase the number of search terms.

Logically, this will get you higher positioning for these terms.

Since you’re not going to go for the one big fish, but plenty of little ones, you’ll not starve and don’t have to waste your breath trying to keep up with the big guys.

Note: Please do not try SEO yourself since it’s highly unlikely you will get the same results that a professional firm will be able to achieve for you.

Like I have mentioned a couple of times before it is inevitable that you combine all efforts to really get the most out of your eBusiness campaign. And eventhough my book “Adding the ‘E’ to your Business Strategy” ( Ebook | Paper Version | Amazon Kindle ) may sound like the howto guide on achieving market leadership it simply isn’t.

This book shows you strategic approaches analyzing the current situation and how you can execute plans which have derived from your analysis.

Stay tuned until next week when we’re going to lay hands on our last topic “Customer Information Management (CRM)”.

So long,

Lars

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