COMMENTARY
JIM RAPOZA
Searching for more traffic?
Establishing good SEO practices is just one thing Web sites must do
There’s a saying in Sure, just as there have been ing and other Web 2.0 and
baseball that a good great baseball teams that were 3.0 technologies, thereby
manager doesn’t win so talented they rose above increasing the ways they
games, but a bad man- their bad managers, there are reach customers and visitors.
ager can lose games. sites with such compelling Affiliations with other
The idea is that a good products and content that they sites can improve reach and
manager lays the ground- get great search rankings and boost a site’s profile. And, of
work to give the players the traffic despite poor SEO. But course, there’s marketing,
chance to win, but a bad sites with bad SEO don’t get sales and public relations.
manager’s poor decisions anywhere near the attention Hall of fame baseball
can lead directly to a loss. they should, and improving manager Casey Stengel
Whether you believe this processes almost always leads once said that managing is
or not it is still an interesting to a higher profile on search getting paid for home runs
idea, one that often can be engines and more traffic. that someone else hits. In
seen outside of sports. In fact,
there’s one thing I’ve been
covering a lot lately that when
performed poorly can be The success of your Web
harmful and when done very site depends more on the
well can only take you so far. quality of content.
This is search engine opti-
mization, or SEO. The main
idea behind SEO is that by
following certain practices But eventually SEO reaches the end, the success of your
and procedures, a Web site a point where it has done all it company’s Web site will
can become highly rated by can for a company Web site. depend more on the quality
popular search engines such The greatest baseball managers of your products and con-
as Google. And this increased of all time can’t take a Triple A tent than on any practices
search engine visibility will team and turn it into a winner and processes for SEO.
lead to increased Web traffic on the major league level. And That doesn’t mean SEO
and more product sales or at a certain point a Web site isn’t worth the effort. Any Web
advertising revenue. gets all of the traffic it’s going site is definitely better off with
Plenty of Web sites do to get, and no amount of SEO good SEO practices in place.
their best to hide from search is going to change that. But don’t expect too much
engines but could benefit Of course, this doesn’t from it. In the end, the site
from good SEO practices. It mean the company should needs to win attention and
doesn’t take long to find sites give up. There are plenty of traffic on its own. ´
that have page URLs that other ways to improve traffic
are all random numbers and outside of search engines. Chief Technology Analyst Jim
letters, or sites that use their Sites can expand into content Rapoza can be reached at
internal links to poor effect. areas such as social network- jrapoza@eweek.com.
