As marketing efforts have made the dramatic shift from traditional to digital, it is no surprise that having a web presence is a defining factor of whether or not your business will be a success or a failure. If you are a professional web design company and not familiar with search engine optimization, you really should be.

Search engine optimization, or seo, is the practice of increasing a websites’ visibility in the search rankings through free or “organic” listings. You could be the most professional website in the world, but without ranking visibility, you will likely become obsolete, and fall behind your web design company competitors. 80 percent of search engine users say that they always or usually ignore sponsored links on SERPs, so seo is not something to take lightly.

In order to improve your rankings organically, there are several routes you can take. First, generating unique and original content on both your professional website, as well as in blogs, will help you to generate some influence in the rankings. In fact, companies that use content marketing strategies that include blogs receive approximately 55 percent more visitors to their professional website. If you are not the best writer, blog writing services are readily available to help you generate some content.

Do not forget about social media. Social media is your friend, and is not just for teens. It not only helps you network with consumers and other professional web design companies, but it serves as a tool for disseminating information to a lot of people very quickly. As of October 2012, there were approximately 77 million Tumblr and 56.6 million WordPress blogs in existence worldwide, giving you a sense of just how big of an impact social media is making.

Finally, work on any web design and development issues you may have. Website design and development address issues related to the website’s appearance, load time, navigability, cross browser compatibility and conversion allowance are great places to start, and as a professional website design company, you likely have unlimited resources on how to fix any issue relatively quickly.

If you have yet to take any of these steps toward increasing ranking visibility, you should. It is the difference between you and your competitors being found by consumers. Research more like this.