What is Search Engine Optimization?
Search Engine Optimization is usually abbreviated at SEO and this is usually the term used to refer to a search engine’s unpaid or organic search results. These are usually on the first page of the search results and shown towards the right hand side of the page and usually receive more views and visitors than other results, these sites are ranked higher than the other search results due to this powerful marketing technique called Search Engine Optimization.
This SEO, along with the strategic use of certain words and phrases helps search engines find your site before many other, allowing for specific site to be ranked much higher than millions of other websites offering the same products or services as your listed business. It is to be understood that search engines are driven by text and looks for key words and phrases that are inserted into the search engine, the key words and phrases which are chosen for search engine optimization are then the first to be picked up by the search engine and has nothing to do with the actual site or its service and products being superior to that of other websites. This has to do with software called crawlers that follow certain links from one website to the next and so on.
Once a site has been crawled by this software, the key words, phrases and text on a website, that specifically refers to the business and what the core of the business is as well as words relating to products and services offered on the website, are then highlighted or indexed to stand out if these words are entered into a search engine.
In essence, Search Engine Optimization is a really simple process that by manipulation ensures that a search engine picks up these manipulated websites with indexed keywords before any other sites. It is a tool used by businesses on the internet to increase traffic to their websites and in turn increases earning potential for the business.
Why do I need this?
In today’s day and age the internet has become a very crucial part of our daily lives, this applies to people of all age and all walks of life, more so for businesses, big or small, the internet has become the perfect platform to market your business and advertise your products and services worldwide, in a fast and cost effective manner and reach millions of people faster than in other way possible and to take matter further many businesses are making use of Search Engine Optimization. Some reasons for making use of Search Engine Optimization are as follows:
- If the public cannot find your business or products and services on the internet, which lists billions of websites, then they cannot make use of them, if they are unaware of the existence of your business, your business will have no customers and inevitably go bankrupt.
- If one is constantly proactive, it is possible to keep all your online competition to a minimum and direct most of the internet traffic to your business website.
- Search Engine Optimization is like a 24/7 operational sales team, constantly promoting your business and the services and products your business has to offer. It is ideally a very important part of the marketing of your business as well as constant advertising.
- Search Engine Optimization does not have a standard cost or fee to be charged for it and ideally the costs vary and can in most cases be structured and tailor made to suit any budget.
- Search Engine Optimization can double your exposure and revenue without having the normal expenses to achieve the same impact such as printing and distribution of adverts and brochures.
- Search Engine Optimization also builds trust and credibility in your business.
What are SEO requirements?
There are some requirements of Search Engine Optimization. A few of these are:
- Keyword Analysis – Google’s Adwords Tool is to be used to identify keywords so that the correct text and phrases stand out.
- 404 Error Pages – these are to be customised so that the search engines can be adequately informed that the page is broken.
- Dedicated Pages – Pages with specific products and services should be created for increased visibility.
- Web Analytics Code – A Google Analytic account is to be created in order to be able to accurately measure the traffic on the website; one should also install Google script on the website in question.
- Page Speed Tool – Required to measure the speed of a particular page, measure uploading and downloading times of the site
- HTML Validation – All pages on any site should be validated with W3C HTML standards
There are numerous other requirements of SEO, however these are just a few listed to give a rough idea of what is required. The company doing your SEO on your website will have a full and extensive list of the requirements.
