Optimising your website is never optional

During a recent pitch for a new website, I was told by my prospect company that optimisation was not a requirement. In most cases such a brief equates to a suicide note for you website's chances of online success.

Let's just forget Search Engine Optimisation for a moment. Let's assume for one minute that we are not even discussing a website or a business. Whatever you do, would you seriously consider to ignore a channel that potentially reaches 80% of your target audience. No, no musician, no artist, no writer, no filmmaker and certainly no business with any sense would!

Website owners, marketing managers and key business decision makers often forget on simple fact: A website optimised for Search Engines is also a website optimised for your target audience.

Clearly in order to get good search engine ranking positions (SERP) your website content and your inbound link structure needs to be highly relevant to the search terms you want to rank for. Equally web users searching for products and services via search engines will want to find highly relevant website. By optimising your site you aim for both higher SERPs and providing a highly relevant website for your target audience.

Optimising your site will lead to better rankings, more targeted search traffic, better click through rate and higher conversion. This should be core to your requirements, not optional.