Your company has a website. Great. But no one’s visiting it. Not so great. And it gets worse: this lack of traffic is likely a result of your site’s poor performance in Google.

Credit: marketingpilgrim.com

First the facts:

• More and more people are heading online (on their smartphones, tablets and laptops) to do pretty much everything (see earlier posts from this digital literacy series for more on that).
• Your company must have a website (it’s not optional) in order to communicate key messages to your target audience.
• It might have worked for Kevin Costner in “Field of Dreams“, but when it comes to websites, if you just build it, they won’t come. And that’s because, of all the crazy things people can do online, the most popular online activities are search and email. That’s right, people won’t stumble upon your site by accident; they’ll find it through a search engine.
• And that brings me to my final point:  statistics from the first quarter of 2012 indicate that 68 per cent of all searches conducted by Canadians are done using Google.

So how did your site incur the wrath of Google? Here are the top five likely causes:

Your site isn’t search engine optimized (SEO)

This is definitely the first place to start because 30 per cent of why a website ranks in Google is because of onsite optimization. If your site isn’t SEO optimized, Google’s spiders just won’t be looking for it.

You’re not targeting the right keywords

This is also critical. If your site isn’t optimized for the keywords people are actually searching for, they’ll be finding another company’s site instead. Period.

Your content sucks

If the content on your site is poorly written or there isn’t enough of it, it’s unlikely to show up in Google.

 You’re lacking links

On the web links are like votes. The more links a website has the more likely it is to rank higher in the search results. As proof: links account for 70% of Google’s algorithm.

 You’re anti-social (or just not social enough)

If your company doesn’t have a social media presence, or isn’t using social media properly, your ranking within Google can suffer. Both Google and Bing are increasingly using social media sites, Twitter in particular, as social signals to rank regular search results.

Insights for this article were contributed by Calin Daniel, president of Inbound Interactive.

About Kelly Ferrier

Kelly Ferrier is Editor/Community Manager at communicatto. Her love of the written word has taken her into a number of industries. This diverse writing background means there's no subject she can't turn into a compelling story. From blog posts and social media community management, to magazine articles and annual reports, Kelly writes copy that captures reader attention and holds it until the final word. When she’s away from her computer, you can find her embarking on mountain adventures, cooking weird and wonderful vegetarian meals or practicing hot yoga.

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