Being Found Online Is Only Half the Job

Firstly, it has been my experience that the problem is rarely search engine optimisation, or SEO. Most of us have received cold calls from companies claiming to be experts in the field.

These wizards sell the idea that, by waving a magic wand over the mysterious workings behind your website, all will be well. I am afraid that it is rarely quite so simple.

SEO is important. There is little value in having an excellent website if nobody can find it. But being found online is only half the job. Once somebody arrives, your website must persuade them that they have found the right business.

In my experience, one of the most common causes of a website failing is neglect. It is a silent killer.

A website is launched with great enthusiasm and then gradually forgotten. Nothing catastrophic happens overnight. The information simply becomes a little less accurate, the design a little more dated and the overall experience a little less useful.

A stale website can also send a negative message to potential customers. If the latest news item was published in 2023, they may reasonably wonder whether the business is still active. If you appear not to care about your own website, why should a prospective customer feel differently?

Using 2023 as our example, it is highly likely that your business has changed during the past three years. You may have introduced new services, stopped offering old ones or changed the type of customer you wish to attract. You will almost certainly have gained new experience and learned more about the problems your customers face. Your website should reflect that evolution.

Regular attention does not mean changing things merely for the sake of it. An accurate and useful page does not need to be rewritten every Tuesday to keep Google happy. It means checking that your website still represents the business as it exists today and continues to answer the questions your customers are actually asking.

We must also consider mobile users. For many small businesses, a substantial proportion of visitors will arrive on a mobile phone. If the site is slow, awkward or difficult to read on a smaller screen, those visitors may never discover how good the business itself is.

A poor mobile experience sends a fairly clear message: you do not value the visitor’s time. It does not matter how attractive the website looks on the large monitor in your office if the contact button disappears off the side of somebody else’s telephone.

Another mistake I see repeatedly is a website that is almost entirely about the supplier or business owner. It explains when the company was founded, lists everything it does and tells us how passionate the team is about customer service.

The prospective customer, meanwhile, is quietly asking a much simpler question: Can you help me?

A successful website should be built around that question. Can visitors understand what you do within a few seconds? Can they recognise the problem you solve? Can they find the information they need without struggling through confusing navigation or pages filled with vague promises?

If not, they leave. That is a lost opportunity, regardless of how successful your SEO may have been in bringing them there.

You must also decide what you want the visitor to do next. It might be completing an enquiry form, calling your business, making a purchase or booking an appointment. Whatever it is, make that next step clear.

Do not force people to search through the website simply to discover how to contact you. Every unnecessary hurdle gives them another opportunity to give up and go elsewhere. Dare I say it, making visitors have to think unnecessarily is rarely a good idea.

Search engines are constantly being refined, but their direction of travel is reasonably clear. Google continues to emphasise helpful, reliable content created primarily for people. In practical terms, this means clear navigation, pages that work properly on mobile devices, reasonable loading times and content that answers genuine questions.

In other words, many of the things that make a website better for visitors can also make it easier for search engines to understand and recommend.

Regular maintenance gives you the opportunity to respond as your business, your customers and the wider online world change. Have you checked the links on your website recently? Do they still lead to the correct pages? Are you referring visitors to services, prices or information that are no longer current?

The same applies to your contact forms. When did you last submit one yourself and confirm that the message arrived? A beautifully designed enquiry form is of little value if every submission disappears quietly into the void.

Telephone numbers, email addresses, opening hours and staff details should also be checked. These are simple things, but they are often the difference between a website that merely exists and one that continues to serve the business.

I would also avoid creating a website that is little more than an online product brochure. There is nothing inherently wrong with explaining what you sell, but a list of products or services is rarely enough on its own.

Customers have questions. They want to know whether something is suitable for them, what the process involves, how long it might take and what happens next. A useful website anticipates those questions and answers them. In doing so, it demonstrates the knowledge and experience behind the business.

This is also where content becomes important. Google talks about experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. The terminology may sound rather grand, but the underlying principle is sensible. Your content should demonstrate that you understand your subject, have relevant experience and can be trusted.

That means going beyond another predictable article offering “five tips and tricks”. Write about the questions your customers genuinely ask. Explain the complications they may not have considered. Share something learned through experience that could not have been copied from the first page of search results.

Artificial intelligence can help organise thoughts, explore ideas and improve the clarity of an article. I use it myself. But asking it to produce large quantities of generic advice will not automatically create useful content. Knowledge, judgement and individual experience still need to come from somewhere.

A website may attract 12,000 visitors in a month. That figure looks impressive in a report, but how many of those visitors became paying customers? Were they the right visitors in the first place? Did they find what they needed? Where did they leave, and why?

Visitor numbers have value, but only when they help us understand what is happening and decide what should be improved. Traffic without purpose is little more than a vanity metric.

That is why I remain cautious when somebody suggests that SEO alone will solve a website’s problems. Improving its position in search results may bring more people through the door. It cannot make the information accurate, explain the customer’s problem, repair a broken contact form or provide a clear reason to take the next step.

Those things require thought, attention and regular maintenance.

Being found online matters. But what happens after someone finds you matters more.

Consumer habits and expectations change over time, and your business will change too. The website representing it must be allowed to change with them.