When most people launch their first business website, they often do it without realizing that there are around 200 million active sites and nearly 2 billion total sites. All of those sites represent some level of competition for customer attention, if not customer dollars.

With all of that competition out there, you need your site to tick every box to turn up in the first few pages of search engine results. While it’s not the only factor, website reputation does play a role. Have you used a website reputation checker recently?

If not, it’s worth doing. If you need a little more convincing, keep reading for some reasons why website reputation matters.

It Matters for SEO

As mentioned above, reputation matters for turning up in search engine results. That’s a shorthand for saying it matters for SEO.

Search engine optimization is a whole lot of very firm advice from search engines about how you set up your site and what goes on it. The better you do with it; the higher your pages show up in search engine results.

Reputation matters here because it almost always relates to things like security or the lack thereof. Search engines dislike sending people to sites with bad security. Not so incidentally, sites with poor security measures typically fare poorly with their website rep.

It Matters for SEM

One of the acronyms you see in digital marketing a lot is SEM. You might wonder, “What does SEM stand for in marketing?” It literally stands for search engine marketing. While the tactics that SEM employs vary, they largely depend on your site faring well in search engine results.

The poor security that downgrades your SEO results also hamstrings your SEM efforts. Like most marketing, SEM only works if you can get it in front of a customer’s eyes. If your site has a lousy rep because it has security issues, search engines will likely downgrade your organic SEM efforts.

Customers Care

The days when people would click on almost any site are long, long gone. Now, people worry about things like viruses, malware, ransomware, and identity theft. They install entire software suites on their computers to help them avoid risky sites.

Those software suites often rank sites as risky or not risky right in the web browser. In other words, they tell customers whether your website rep is good or bad. A good reputation website typically sees more traffic, which means more potential sales.

Website Reputation Checker and You

A website reputation checker is a necessary first step in understanding how search engines and security software will potentially treat your website. If the checker comes back and says your site has a good reputation, it’s all good.

If the checker comes back and says your site has a bad reputation because of X, Y, and Z, it gives you something to work on. The good news is that fixing the problem will typically fix your website rep.

Looking for more business website tips? Check out the posts over in our business section.