Why SEO is Really Important

Today I received my latest edition of National Geographic Traveler magazine. It was enshrouded in a paper cover advertising a couple of products (what’s the print industry term for that kind of thing? Like what’s on the New Yorker, except that it stretches all the way across the cover. It’s stuck on with that great glue that’s fun to peel off the spine of the magazine.) One of the products advertised was the Kodak DX7590, a ‘pro-am’ digital camera. I was curious to look up its features and price, so I entered this query in Google.
Kodak’s product page was third in the search results, preceded by two reviews of the camera. Both reviews are pretty positive, but imagine if they weren’t. Every potential buyer using Google starts their evaluation Google with two reviews that encourage them to look elsewhere. That’s why every company, large and small, needs to care about search engine optimization.

On a technical note, I’m guessing that the search results reflect Google’s increasing reliance on the value of incoming links. Clearly, Kodak’s site has been around for a while and has signficant search engine whuffie. However, more people are probably linking to the reviews that to the product page itself.