SEO (search engine optimization) is the black art of tweaking a website’s content so that search engines not only index it properly, but send you targeted search engine traffic. SEO can turn a nice-looking website that doesn’t produce the desired results (sign-ups or whatever) into a steady cash flow (through sign-ups or whatever).
The problem with SEO is that once a visitor is on your site, it has nothing to do with effective communication and conversion rates. A designer could come up with the simplest, most concise message and means to call visitors to action, but that might not get visitors to the site in the first place if the content doesn’t provide enough for the search engines to go on.
To be honest, this is the problem I am having with the net-at-hand website. I am under no delusions that the website is any great work of design (causing the visitors to gladly go to the sign-up page and give their email address while doing so with grace and beauty), but its main problem is an SEO one. I am getting virtually no traffic from search engines that has anything to do with what Net-at-hand does.
So, it is time to turn that around. I am going to start on a new version of the Net-at-hand website that I will take live when it is ready. Net-at-hand is almost one year old and the only marketing efforts I have made with it are word-of-mouth with clients and friends. I don’t have any money to spend on marketing, but good SEO doesn’t cost anything but time. Right now time is easier to scrounge up than money is.
I am putting a link to it here so you can see the progress on the site as I make it. I am also putting a link here because I want google to cast its eye on it so I can start gauging the effects of my efforts.