No SEO? Is this your business website?

New research conducted by Thomson Local and AnalyticSEO shows that over half of UK business websites have conducted little or no search engine optimisation, making them bordering on impossible for a potential customer to find on the search engines. Worryingly, this figure extends to over 70% of SMEs (Small Medium Enterprises) who in the current climate are those which need to be using the internet ever more to reach their target audience.

Nearly 75% are missing website analytics, which are one of the most important tools for assessing how your website is working for your business. Over 75% are missing HTML and XML site maps, and over 70% do not even have the basic SEO factors – meta data, search engine friendly page titles, H1 tags, alt img tags, descriptions and keywords.

Interestingly, the offsite optimisation analysis is based purely on inbound links and SMEs have on average 408 inbound links, whilst the UK company average is 6,874. For all those companies not using analytics software, knowing which sites are generating the most useful traffic as well as how many links the website has pointing to it, will remain an unknown! How many inbound links does your website have? And are they quality links or have you just sought quantity? Check your analytics to find out which sites drive interested buyers or visitors likely to convert.

If you are spending any money currently on search engine marketing, these figures should give you pause for thought about how well you are doing as compared to your competitors, and this blog gives you many ideas and examples of how to improve your internet marketing.