I speak with a lot of business owners. And I’d be willing to bet that 90% of them have no idea what is going on with their website. That’s ok, they’re busy running their business, right?
As a business owner, you can’t do it all. Along with running a business wisely comes hiring people that can bring that business to a higher level – whether through increased sales, increased traffic, or increased leads.
Before you hire a web firm to help you, educate yourself. Then listen to their sales guy and see how he answers these questions. Do they jive?
- How many different things does Google measure when deciding where to rank your website in their index?
- What percentage of searchers go to page 2 of any Google result?
- Does it matter if your site uses the www. at the front of the domain?
- Can you do things on other people’s websites to increase your own site’s rankings?
- Is St Louis and Saint Louis the same thing in the eyes of search engines? Should you care?
- Is that website that your sister’s boyfriend’s dog trainer built really doing your business justice?
- Do business owners have to submit their websites to Google, Yahoo! and Bing in order to be listed in those respective search engines?
- Should you buy the .net, .org, and .us versions of your .com domain?
- Did your webmaster ask you for a list of ten or twenty ‘keywords’ to add to your website when it was being built?
- How many times does a visitor to your website have to click before they find what they came for?
- Can you control the way your listing looks in the search engines?
- Can you track your website to find problems, broken links and missed opportunities?
- What’s a bounce rate?
- What is ‘shotgun advertising’?
- What the heck is Pay-per-click? And why is it a bandaid instead of a smart business investment?
- Should I register my domain or build me website first?
