SEO firms charge big dollars to enhance your web presence through search engine optimization. But what does that mean? How can technically-challenged writers benefit from SEO without breaking the bank? This article is the first in a series. Learn what the SEO firms don’t tell you and enhance your web presence.
But you may ask, with social media, is a web presence all that important? Everybody is on social media, aren’t they? It’s certainly easier to start a Facebook page than it is to create a web presence, so why bother?
The fact is that actual numbers of social media usage are far less than its publicity. According to comScore’s Unique Visitor Table for Feb 2016, Facebook with 206,480 million unique visitors actually fell behind Google Sites (243,601 million), Yahoo Sites (204,421 million) and Microsoft Sites (194,845 million).
Although there is a fluctuation in numbers, always remember that reality and press accounts do not necessarily jive.
Additionally, most people don’t use Facebook to research information that could direct them to you or your book. Forrester Research in their June 2013 study (How Consumers Found Websites in 2012, July 2013, Forrester Research, Inc.) found a majority of the United States adults prefer search engines over social media networks or alternate sources. The technique of choice is still SEO. As a technically challenged writer, if I can create a web presence, anyone can and make SEO work for them
Let me tell you a little about my background. First, I was (thanks to Candee Fick, I no longer am) the definition of what it means to be technically challenged. I’m good with the keyboard — I learned to type on a typewriter, at the time typing 120 wpm without mistakes. I was a senior attorney with a national company responsible for contracts, intellectual property, the document retention program, and was the in-house contact for the anti-trust law suits we were involved with as the repository of documents.
I had a secretary and I dictated my contracts, letters, and other documents. When my husband and I came out to Colorado for a 1 week vacation, I returned to discover my secretary did a major faux pas for the General Counsel and she was fired on the spot. Someone got the brilliant idea that instead of replacing her, they would use her salary to purchase a computer for every lawyer (there were 9 of us) and spread the duties of the remaining secretaries out over all 9 of us.
I was like a deer in the headlights.
I averaged between 110 and 150 contracts/month, 30-50 copyright registrations, not to mention all the fires I had to put out and everything else I was responsible for and I didn’t even know how to turn the “machine” on — yes, it was “the machine.” I couldn’t even imagine how I could function in my job. Needless to say, it was one of the best things that could have ever happened to me. They put me in a Word Perfect class and taught me how to turn on the “machine.” I was good to go.
Then came the World Wide Web, and another dragon reared its ugly head. I was always comfortable using the computer as a glorified typewriter, but … times change.
How comfortable are you with technology?
(c) 2019 Karen Van Den Heuvel