I get it - you want your site to be #1 on all search results pages, you want to get great SEO ranking on your website and be exceptional in your SEO marketing. Right? Everybody wants that.

But what does it actually mean to you to be on page 1 of Google Search results? Do you just want to increase your website traffic or do you need more sales, more leads, more website inquiries?

In other words, is your website a good candidate for SEO optimization?

First, ask yourself a couple of questions:

• - Are you exceptional at converting traffic that already comes to your website?
• - Do people know what to do once they land on your website?
• - Do they already buy your product, ask you questions, comment on your posts, sign up for your newsletter, send you emails, etc?

If the answer is "no", you need to optimize your website first and only then think about SEO. The reason is that you are not ready for new traffic; you need to do better at selling these visitors your services.

Still want to optimize for search engines?

Here are top 5 reasons why you shouldn't SEO

1. If you do not know what SEO means

   Even if you know that SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, you need to understand the process of optimizing your website. You need to set your expectations accordingly and not panic when your website is still not showing on Google search results after 3 days of SEO work. SEO is a long process. Unless you believe in the importance of it, you should not be optimizing - you will drive yourself and everybody around you crazy.

2. If you do not know how much traffic you get

   If you are not aware of your website traffic, it means that you do not measure it, i.e. you do not have analytics installed on your website. That tells me that you do not have time to attend to your website, to check its temperature every so often. In other words, you do not know how your website is performing, if you are better than your competitors or if your website needs optimization. Until you know that, there is no reason to pour money into SEO. Even if you get more traffic, you would not know if it is bringing you sales. Get your website fixed first, then think about additional traffic.

3. If you do not have optimization budget

   SEO is a long process and if you are serious about it, you need to be able to invest in it for at least 6 months to start seeing results. You have to know your goals and measure performance, adjust your strategy and keep at it until you make some progress. Your website needs to become and authority, it has to become valuable for other people - only then it will start gathering clout. And even when you are on top of the world, you cannot stop because there are lines of eager people who are anxious to take that #1 spot on Google search page.

4. If you almost never update your website

   There is nothing wrong with a static website. Perhaps, you have a brick-and-mortar business and your website goal is to have your business information, location, and telephone number out there. But do not expect your home page to be found on Google's first page search results for a variety of keywords. When you provide limited information with no interaction with your visitors, they will not be interested in visiting your website often. New visitors will come and go quickly and because your website is not very engaging, Google will put it in the attic. Of course, when someone is searching for your company name, I hope your website comes up high on the search results pages. In this scenario, there is no reason for you to spend your time and money on optimizing for search engines. Make sure you optimize your site to capture those visitors who come to your website. Make sure your customers can find you by typing in your company name or your branded products.

5. If you have a Flash website

   I know, I know - Flash looks cool. And it moves. And it can play music. And people can get mesmerized by the artistry of a creator. If you think that - I hope you can prove it with incredible conversion rate statistics. However, Flash is really bad for getting your website noticed. Robots cannot see what your site is all about. They read text, not watch movies. So, they collect what they can get - any text they can find on your site. And if your whole site is all in Flash, they will collect only very little text.

   If your navigation is in Flash too, robots will see that your site has just one page and will not crawl the rest of the site. If your navigation is using text links, the bots will crawl them, find little text, compare pages and punish you for duplicate content. In this situation, even if you try to optimize, you will be hurting your efforts with your website. No need to waste money. Re-think Flash first. Do some usability tests and find out for yourself how your visitors use your website. Again, website optimization is in order before you can do anything about SEO.

There are still things you can do to improve your website. Make sure all the titles on your pages are unique. Create exciting descriptions for your pages to compel people to click on your links. Make it super easy for your visitors to do what you want them to do on your website. Make the decision to take that action easy for them too - tell them how you are better than all other thousands of websites that offer the same thing. And if you want your website to work for you, get serious about it, give it attention, understand how things work, and hire a good team to get your website off the life support.

If you would like for us to evaluate your website and give you a couple of tips on how to improve it, send us your information and we will be happy to look it over.