SEO Can Get People to Your Website But Cannot Keep Them There

Many website owners spend time, effort and money on SEO (search engine optimization), which is an important component for their site being found by search engines.

And these search engines take into consideration how long people stay on a site. In other words, is your site an accurate result for the search terms people typed in?

A very important thing to remember about SEO is:



Good SEO cannot keep people on your site!



You want the prospective clients and customers of your products and services to stay on your site once they arrive there. For these site visitors to stay, the site itself must instantly convey what is on offer as well as the benefits for the visitors.

And in most cases this is NOT achieved by a site that takes forever to load due to a Flash home page or due to an over-filled page too distracting for people to try to figure out.

In both cases an immediate response to these issues is often to click away to something easier to read, easier to navigate, and easier to "get."

The reason I'm writing this particular blog post is because, in an email exchange with someone who has an over-filled website home page, the person said he was first going to work on SEO before improving his site. The counter-productiveness of this really hit me.

Let me be clear about what I'm saying: I definitely support SEO, and in an ideal world, you would simultaneously concentrate on SEO and a people-friendly site.

But if you are only going to do one at a time, your first priority should be making your website people friendly. Remember, Google is NOT going to buy from you – and the people who come to your site may become clients and customers.

© 2011 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of Miller Mosaic Social Media Marketing. Download now the company's free report "5 Tips for Staying Top of Mind With Your Prospective Target Markets" at www.millermosaicllc.com/los-angeles-s...