The Importance of Search Engine Optimization (seo)

Just a few years ago, most people had no idea what SEO was.  Today, SEO, or search engine optimization, has practically become a household term.  Search engine optimization involves the use of several strategies aimed at improving the ranking of websites on major search engines.  Most websites that have experienced any amount of success online have made use of search engine optimization techniques such as link-building, content optimization, and site re-structuring. 

Location, Location, Location

In the offline world, the location of your business can be very important.  If you are located in an area that not many people frequent, fewer people will approach your business and sales will suffer as a result.  The same holds true on the internet.  Of the trillions of web pages that exist on the internet, what are the chances of someone finding your website out of the blue?   They are slim to none unless you take the action necessary to improve your search engine ranking and therefore attract traffic via major search engines. 

What to Look for in SEO Services

If you want to achieve better search engine rankings, you can either optimize your website on your own or hire a search engine optimization company to assist you.  The price of your services will depend on how competitive your niche is and how large your website is.  More competitive niches are difficult to rank for and thus require more effort on the SEO professional’s part.  However, no matter how expensive SEO services may seem at first glance, you shouldn’t judge them based solely on price.  Most important is the ROI you will receive from the service.  Even if you have to spend 150,000 dollars on search engine services one year, the investment is totally worthwhile if you generate an extra one million dollars in sales that year. 

For smaller business that simply aren’t crunching such large numbers, being able to afford SEO services may be an issue.  In this case, your best bet is to teach yourself SEO.  There are an endless amount of blogs and websites out there that provide free SEO information.  You can also purchase e-books, reports, tools, and memberships that will make it a lot easier for you to optimize your website on your own.  However, optimizing your own website can be a very time-consuming affair.  In the end, you are going to have to make the decision between investing a lot of time or a lot of money. 

When you hire SEO services, you have the choice between hiring an SEO consultant or an SEO company.  A consultant may charge you hourly consulting fees and tell you exactly what you need to do in order to optimize your website.  An SEO company on the other hand may charge you an ongoing monthly fee for your SEO campaign or charge a percentage of the revenue that you generate after your website is optimized. 

SEO Basics

In order to plan an effective SEO campaign, you must understand the basics of SEO.  Some important components of SEO include keyword research, landing pages, content creation, link-building, analytics, and site crawlability.  Keyword research involves the use of tools such as Google’s Adwords tool to find keywords and keyword phrases that people are searching for in your niche.  You would then need to target these keywords on your website through generating relevant content.  Content is considered king in SEO because search engines love websites that contain lots of relevant, informative, and interesting articles.  Content also attracts links from people such as bloggers and social media website users.  Search engines measure the popularity and authority of your website based on the number of relevant backlinks you have. 

Ways you can build links to your website include via directory submissions, blog commenting, and forum commenting.  Ideally, a backlink would have anchor text (the clickable text of a hyperlink) that contains the keyword phrase or term you are targeting.  That backlink should be on a popular and authoritative website in your niche that features relevant content for optimal results. 

Spiders, or search engine bots, crawl the content of your website to determine what it is about in order to index it properly on the search engines.  To ensure that the spiders can read your content properly, you must make your website crawlable.  Crawlability is determined by the structure of your website.  Consult an SEO professional for details on how you can make your website more crawlable.  Crawlability is generally an issue that is most important for larger websites that have hundreds of pages of content. 

Blogs are an important aspect of SEO because search engines favor websites that are constantly updated.  Blogs are frequently updated so most, if not all, prominent websites feature a blog.  Blogs are also an effective way to connect with humans because they provide a constant flow of relevant, informative content and help to establish you as an authority in your niche.  When it comes to SEO, blogs are beneficial because they can be optimized effectively and make it easier for your website to be indexed. 

In order to track and measure the results of your SEO campaign, you must use an analytics tool such as Google Analytics to determine which parts of your campaign are effective and which parts are not.  Use analytics tools to tweak your campaign and improve your strategy. 

So there you have it.  Search engine optimization sounds very complex but once you get past all of the jargon, you’ll find that it is actually pretty cut and dry.  There are several factors to consider when optimizing your website but to put it simply, create great content and attract links and you’re bound to increase traffic to your website over time.  To see your efforts bear fruit more quickly, hire an SEO consultant or company to help you achieve search engine visibility and an increase in organic traffic in a shorter amount of time.