SEO 101: What the hell is SEO and Why You Need It Now?

Search Engine Optimization: What??

SEO is an acronym that stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the “practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.”

The way users find information on the internet is through a search engine, like Google. You type in a phrase and then the search engine returns what they think are the most appropriate results. The “search engines” use crawlers to explore the web and record everything they find. These crawlers are like automated data retrieval programs. They record information, content and links on your web page. These are added to the search engine’s database. When you search e.g. “Indian restaurants“, the engine is returning results from its database. The “Optimization” part of SEO relates to how well your content has been optimized for search engines to find it.

The higher you rank for a keyword phrase, the greater visibility and a higher number of visitors to your site. In short, more prospective clients or users to connect with you.

Many businesses believe that SEO is a waste. If I have a store, why do I need to have a website or SEO? People will come to me anyway. Well today, everyone uses search engines. Find the closest Tim Horton’s. Get directions to their favorite takeaway.

As a business, you need SEO to get better leads and these in the long term will result in more clients. The higher your site ranks on a search page, the more likely that clients will click on that link. SEO leads have a +/-15% conversion rate, while leads from mail or print advertising have a 1.7% conversion rate.

So it pays to do SEO, as your conversion rate is much higher.

So how do you get your site noticed?

Implementing an SEO strategy is not a simple or easy process, but a long term one. With Google’s SEO ranking algorithm updated from time to time, you have to stay ahead of the curve.

Even though Google own’s 76% of the market, don’t forget Yahoo, Bing and many others. Some reports show that Google’s domination is even higher.

There are 40,000 Google searches every second.

Here are some tips to get ahead.

1. Establish what keywords your customers use to search for you. The Google Keyword Planner is a good start.

2. Add relevant keywords to your site.
3. Check your On Page SEO. This is how one optimizes one’s website to rank it higher in SERPs. Search engines need to understand your content, and if you make it easy for them to do so, you will rank higher
4. Check your Off Page SEO. This is what you and others do away from your website to raise your page ranking with search engines. These include link building, social media engagement, guest blogging, reviews, linked and unlinked brand mentions and local SEO.
5. Use SEO Tools like Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools to track and refine it.
6. Write great content and get it out there in the world wide web. If you build trust, it will add credibility to your brand and increase your ranking. Establishing trust authority takes patience, effort, and time. There is no one magic bullet answer.
7. SEO is long-term. Changes will not happen overnight. Patience, time and effort is needed. There are no real shortcuts or cheats to trick the search engine robots. Cheating, like in exams, is penalized.
8. If you’re are on Page 2 of the results, how many clicks are you going to get? A recent study shows that the first three organic search ranking positions result in 40% of all click-throughs. The higher you are, the better. 85% of Google searches do not go past the first page.
   

And More

See our next article on A Beginner’s Guide to the Mad Universe of SEO, Keywords and Some Ranking Factors.