Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Having the best looking website won't give your business any benefit if it can't be found. Merely registering your URL with all the major search engines is not a guarantee your website will be listed. People who are actively searching for your products or services are qualified prospects who, in the most part, have already made the decision to buy! Focused SEO brings the searcher and the supplier together.
What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?
Search Engine Optimisation is about trying to gain prominence in the 'organic' or 'natural' listings - the results found on the left of the search results page. Clicks on these links are free, but SEO requires patience, investment and a long-term approach. SEO is challenging because there are literally hundreds of factors that the search engines take into account to determine relevance. However, the two most important factors which are essential for good ranking positions are:
On-page optimization:
Ensuring that the copy on the page is relevant to the search terms entered (the main factors include keyword and synonym matches and density, keyword formatting, keywords in anchor text and page title tags).Link-building
This creates links into a page (inbound or backlinks). The search engine assesses each link to a page from another page or another site as a vote for this page. Pages and sites with more inbound links are ranked more highly.
It is not just number of links which are important to determining the position, but the quality of links is vital. Quality is determined by context, relevancy, and popularity of the linking page, as well as the link anchor text and adjacent text.
Advantages of SEO
SEO is potentially the most important search marketing approach for marketers since most searchers click on the natural listings. Here are some other advantages of SEO:
Cost Effective
A key benefit of SEO is that it is relatively cost-effective since there is no payment to the search engines for being placed there.
Additionally, the cost of SEO is relatively fixed, independent of click volume. Effectively, the cost per click from SEO declines through time after initial optimization costs and lower ongoing optimization costs.
No media costs
But resources are necessary for key phrase analysis and to complete optimization on the website pages. Together with paid-search it can also offer a highly targeted audience – visitors referred by SEO will only visit your site only if they are looking for specific information on your products or related content.
Let Interactive Red help your customers find your web site! Contact us for more details.