Above: Man tries to resuscitate donkey, which is easier than SEO.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the fancy way of saying, 'Where does my website rank in the Google search engine results pages, and how can I improve its position'.

We are all sick of getting spammed about SEO and behalf of SEO I would like to apologise for all the spam, but... there are real reasons to pay attention to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). The best reason is that it is directly related to how much business you can acquire online. The next best reason is that it's cheaper that just about any other form of marketing. Spend $5000 on radio advertising and when that ad campaign is gone, so is your $5k. Spend $5K on SEO and it's the investment that keeps on giving. Once you near the top of the Google results, it's relatively easy to stay there, leads, sales, and new clients will keep on coming. 

Why getting a Website makes sense

A website can help engage with your customers at many points in the buying cycle, from awareness to research or even a purchase online using ecommerce. Covering off these touch points is the core of Digital Marketing and a website will often tick more of these boxes than any other form of digital marketing. 

Credibility

Although the primary reason may sound a little vague, it is to gain credibility for your business.Almost everyone regardless of whether they are purchasing a product or service, will at some point check your website. A lot of people want to do some background checking on your products or company, therefore, they expect to see a website popping up on the first page in Google when they type in your product or brand.

If you don't have a website you run the risk of your prospective customer checking out your competition and spending their money elsewhere. It doesn't matter if you build your own site or you pay someone else to do it, you should at the very least have a website with your basic contact information and ideally some info on the products and services you offer. If you want to go for extra credit then your website can relate a strong sense of the values behind your brand, the level of professionalism that you offer and the demographic your product is pitched at.

Sometimes it's really obvious that your website has been hacked, the hacker replaces the front page of your website with their own message stating you've been hacked. For a bigger brand this can be very damaging for the brand/business and consumer confidence, for example, if an e-commerce website comes up with 'hacked' across the front page, would you ever feel confident when entering your credit card details into that website again? For smaller businesses there is less impact but it's still something you need to take steps to prevent. Our friends website (which is hosted with another provider) got hacked recently and they were charged $650 to restore the website from a backup, which is enough justification to try and take all preventative measures possible. 

So what are the best ways to prevent your website from being hacked?

Shout out to our mate Sarah from Spick and Span Cleaning Services, congratulations on the launch of your new website.