SEO or search engine optimization – what is this and what does it have to do with your business? Read on to find out more about this most used word in the online world.
SEO is a way of improving and enhancing a website with the sole intention of increasing the number of guests visiting the page as a result of initiating an online search. This means that if an online user searches for a particular item or product, and your business or company offers that certain product as contained in your website, the search engine will include your web site in the list they will generate for the searcher. The searcher will then check your site to see if you have what was needed and this will, of course, result to someone browsing your website. That someone could be a potential customer. The process goes on and as long as your site contains the keywords which have links to the other sites, online browsers will be able to see your site on the search result list.
SEO your Website
How do you do this? And why do you have to SEO your website? Internet users navigate the net through search engines, which provide the targeted traffic – the people looking for what you offer, to multitude of websites, including yours. They serve as the gateway for the ‘traffic’ (people) to find your site (product).
Therefore, it is important that your site content can be put into the database of the search engine making it easily detected by search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc). If your website contents are not properly ‘read’ by the search engines, the incredible opportunities presented are totally missed.
Create Good Website Content
Websites are not just about putting all the information about your business, the products or the services, the outlets or stores, the contact details, etc. All these are vital information, but your website needs more than just an enumerated list of information.
Effort should be made in providing good quality content for your website. For most search engines, their success is rated by ‘long click’ – where users click on a site generated by the search, stay there for a long time before going back to the search result page again to check out the next useful link. If your website lands on the first link and the searchers hit the back button in a few seconds, you might have some issues with your content. And the search engine may have ‘read’ your content the wrong way.
In order for your site to land on the ‘long click’ link, make sure that you have structured your site content such that the search engine will be able to interpret the data correctly to land them in the appropriate search results. The use of keywords is critical as this is how net searchers begin their quest in the internet – by typing those important words in the search box. By utilizing the right sets of words or phrases which are easily recognizable by search engines, you increase the chances of getting more traffic for your site. This traffic will translate into potential customers or sales opportunities.
Grow Your Site’s Link Profile
These links serve as the streets between pages when search engines crawl through the web when activated by a searcher. Links enable the search engine to analyze the popularity of a website according to the number of popular pages or sites linked to them. Trustworthy sites are likely to be used as trusted links by other websites. As your site increases the profile of links attached to your page, you are gaining attraction and traffic from the engines. If more sites link to your web page, the search engine will recognize that as an indication of the quality of content your page has.
When you have satisfied all these important components of SEO for your website, your interaction with the users and the search engines will have improved tremendously and that will result to improved business activities.