For individuals and businesses, search engine optimization (SEO) has been a mystery. The reality is, SEO is a critical part of any website marketing strategy and not so complicated if mapped out correctly. Continue reading on to find out what SEO is, and why it is important to you and your business.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization” and is a method for getting internet traffic to your website from search engine results.
Search
The most popular and common method to search for relevant information on the web is to use search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo. All search engines contain advanced algorithms which utilise your search term and return the most relevant information possible, with the best matched being located at the top of the page.
The search engine process is not the same as a user browsing a user blog, news site or social media platform. Search engines are mostly used when a user is trying to find a specific answer to the question. For example “Buy red shoes”, or “How to clean my car”. This is important, and needs to be considered whilst designing a SEO campaign.
Engine
The “Engine” refers to the search engine service itself that people are using to locate information. Each search engine service crawls the web, capturing everything that can be found and stored into there own databases. As a user types a question into a search engine and clicks search, the engine returns a list of best matched results (based of algorithms) to the user. The results are not live, they are the indexed version from the search engine itself.
The critical factor here, is that if a website is not designed and optimized correctly, when a search engine crawls that site, it may not extract all the relevant information required for that site, therefore not indexing correctly in the search engines system. This is a major issue, if a search engine cannot index a website correctly, it therefore will not return the results to a user searching for specific information.
Optimization
The secret of optimization in a website seems to be a myth to many. There are many known and proven methods out there which have stood the test of time. There are a lot of SEO practice methods out there which claim to work and generate quick traffic. The reality is, none of them work well and eventually search engines penalise the site for bad practice. A website’s ranking can be improved by:
- Ensuring your pages are optimised with valid keywords, tags and links
- Producing original and unique content.
- Use a reliable, fast and secure hosting service with SSL certificates.
Why you you to have SEO
If you have a website, whether personal or business then you need SEO. Anyone who claims otherwise is kidding themselves. For example, a brick-and-mortar business with a shop front may believe that there website will not benefit from SEO. This is far from the truth. Not having your website index correctly in your search engine is like not advertising your store in the local paper or local billboards.
Search Engines used by almost everyone
Almost everyone now uses a search engine to find information. If a user wants to find a gardening service in Melbourne, Australia then the general search term would be “Gardening service in Melbourne”. If your website is not indexed in search engines correctly, then it simply wont display or be listed down on lower pages which is basically the same as not being listed at all.
Increases traffic to your website and quality leads at no cost
Yes, it does. SEO increases traffic to a website. Not only does it increase traffic, it generates the right traffic, which are potential customers or people with specific interest in your topics or articles. When your website is SEO optimized with good quality content, it will become an asset over time and generate quality leads at no cost.
If your looking to improve your SEO, please visit out our SEO services page for more information by clicking HERE.