As Told by a Lonely, Un-optimized Website
The frustrating thing is, I’m such a darned nice looking site. But it feels so helpless, buried by so many pages in those all-important Google results. Will ANYONE ever FIND me here? I’ve seen some research that says it’s not very likely. If most people won’t scan more than three pages, what chance do those of us on page 13 have?
Oh, don’t get me wrong. I DO have visitors. I mean, current customers know me and can find me. And if someone knows the name of my company or even my URL from an ad or something, they’ll find their way here.
And the guys that designed me come here a lot to admire their work. And they proudly send other potential web-design prospects to check me out as an example. (Of course, none of those people ever buy anything or come back again, because they’re not really interested in my business.)
But the people who DO get here love me. I have a really slick FLASH introduction (who cares if search engines don’t even notice it.) And my content is lots of fun and interesting. The headlines on my pages are very clever; they don’t describe my products or the services or benefits I provide. That would be boring, right? They “have fun with it.”
And lots of my most important features, including the words, are displayed as part of big, bold graphics. (I’ve heard that search engines can’t read them that way, but my visitors sure do!)
It’s just a little discouraging that I hear so many nice compliments, but when somebody uses a search engine and types in a term that’s very important to my company, I wind up down here, where most prospects will never really find me. It’s a shame; my company would really be great for them!
It’s not that I mind it down here on Page 13; it’s a very interesting neighborhood. I’m surrounded by lots of unusual things, like auto parts and PDFs from other peoples’ websites. Articles from obscure magazines. Most of my “neighbors” have nothing to do with my business. But it’s probably a lot more interesting than being up there on the first few pages with my company’s competitors.
Anyway, thanks for this opportunity to talk. After all, it gave us the chance to meet, and that wasn’t likely to happen any other way. Unless, of course, someone decides to go for that SEO stuff and make me more search friendly. That would be okay, I guess, but I’m kind of used to it down here now. And moving is such a pain.
