Because I have been working on the Web since 2000, no one needs to prove to me or anyone I work with the value of a Web site. SEO is a different story. Some people get it and some people don’t. And as with most things, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

What also can be a dangerous thing is having a Web site that is not optimized. For over a year I have been living in and repairing a fixer home. I spend a lot of time online researching methods, products, and finally retail establishments where I can buy the products to apply those methods. I have no trouble finding sites to help me establish the correct methods to help me fix this house. Product sites vary in usefulness, but what I have had the most trouble with is finding information on the brick-and-mortar establishments where I can buy these products. Some sites do actually have Web sites, and I can just imagine the salesperson that sold these frame-based sites 4 or so years ago.

I can imagine the case they made to the small to medium business owner that they needed a web presence. That all they needed was a simple site and the salesperson would take care of the rest of the details. And I am sure they did. And then the site was either never quite finished or never updated after the initial publish. And so they sit there, languishing on the web and surfacing in my searches for obscure retail plumbing parts. These sites have incorrect information on hours, phone numbers, and even addresses sometimes. They rarely offer any detailed product information and if they do, the links to the product sites are broken. This pains me. And it makes me, the potential customer, angry.

And if there is more than one choice in retailer, I am going to choose the one that looks like it was created in the 21st century and if it is optimized they get bonus points. And when I say optimized, I am not talking about anything other than not using frames and having individual pages with actual title tags. These are simple things here and I am not just being picky because I am an SEO professional. These are also the things that “normal” people look for and unsurprisingly, that will cause a site to rank well in Google or other search engines.

This is what makes the differences between having a broken down web presence that is nothing more than a placeholder and having Web Presence that leads your users to come to your store and buy things.