Search Engine Optimization, which is also known as SEO, is
the process of increasing the volume and quality of traffic to a website from
search engines via organic or search results. The higher your company's website
ranks on Search Engine Result Page (SERP), the more searchers will visit your
site.
As a marketing strategy for
increasing site's relevance, SEO consultants consider how search algorithms
work and what people search for. A SEO process may involve a site's coding and
structure, content and copywriting, site presentation, as well as fixing other
problems that will prevent search engines from indexing your company website.
If your company's website is not indexed by search engines, there will be no
chance at all for your site to get high visibility rankings on search engines.
Therefore, it is extremely important for businesses to take note of SEO and
make sure that their websites are properly indexed by search engines.
The term "SEO" can
also refer to "Search Engine Optimizer". This is an industry term
that refers to agencies and consultants that carry out search engine
optimization process on behalf of their clients, and by employees who perform
SEO services in-house. Every agency and consultant has their own SEO
methodology; therefore they may use different methods to achieve high organic rankings
for websites. In most cases, in order to have effective SEO, it may require
changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics will be incorporated
into website development and design. That is why almost all credible SEO
agencies and consultants will first look at the design and back-end
architecture of a website before starting any SEO process. This will ensure
that SEO is carried out effectively.
Search Engine Optimization as
a Marketing Strategy for Businesses
So how should businesses use
SEO as a marketing strategy? The primary objective of implementing SEO to a
company's website is to drive targeted traffic to it. Eye tracking studies have
shown that searchers scan a search result from top to bottom and left to right,
looking for relevant results. Therefore, if your site is near the top of
organic listings rankings (organic listings refer to the web results that are
listed on the left hand side of the SERP), it will most likely increases the
number of searchers who will visit your site.
A successful online marketing
campaign may usually involve SEO, but it also consists of the use of paid
advertising on search engines, building high quality websites to engage and
persuade site visitors take action either through enquiries or online sales,
setting up analytic programs to allow site owners to measure their successes
and improving a site's conversion rate.
Benefits of SEO for
Businesses
Businesses can benefit from
SEO in a lot of ways, be it to increase brand awareness, get sales leads or
increase sales revenue. The following is a list of benefits that businesses can
get from SEO:
o Get more targeted traffic.
SEO can increase the number of visitors to your site who are actively searching
for your product or service.
o Increase brand awareness.
SEO can give your brand a high international profile. You can also use SEO to
create brand awareness for any new service or product by optimizing related
product/service key phrases to rank higher on search engines.
o Marketing your brand 24/7.
With SEO, your website will get exposure 24 hours a day, 7 days a week -
without stopping.
o Higher sales. As SEO brings
you targeted traffic, it can mean increased sales of your product or service.
o Long term positioning. Once
a properly optimized & designed site is in place, rankings on organic
listings should be consistent whereas the cost for Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
Advertising is ongoing.
o More value for dollars. Once
your company's website has achieved high organic rankings for various key
phrases, you will not have to pay for each visit. Whereas for PPC Advertising,
to enjoy high ranking visibility on search engines, you need to pay for each
click or visit to your site.
However, to make sure that you
have a successful SEO implementation, you need to make sure that your dedicated
SEO agency abides to the guidelines of search engine when optimizing your
site...
White Hat SEO VS Black Hat
SEO
When it comes to SEO, there
are 2 schools of thoughts - White Hat SEO vs Black Hat SEO. White hat SEO is
techniques that search engines recommend as good practice and black hat SEO is
those techniques that search engines do not approve of. For SEO consultants who
practise white hat SEO, they tend to produce results that last a long time.
Black hat SEO techniques may get a website to rank well initially, but the site
will eventually be banned either temporary or permanently once search engines
discover what they are doing.
So it is very important for
you to know the best practices in the SEO industry and make sure that the SEO
agency that is handling your account uses techniques that conform to the search
engines' guidelines and involves no deception.
White hat technique is generally
summed up as creating content for users, not the search engines. The content
that is created should be easily accessible to search engine spiders, rather
than intending to trick the algorithms from its intended purpose. So, the
general rule of thumb is to stay on the safe side by creating content that is
relevant to your target audience. Search engines value relevancy - they will
definitely want to rank a site higher their organic listings if the content on
the site is what searchers are looking for.
Black hat technique usually
involves techniques that attempt to improve rankings that are disapproved by
search engines, or involve deception. One common black hat technique is to use
hidden text, either as text coloured similar to the background of the website,
or positioned off-screen. Another common technique known as cloaking is to load
a different page depending on whether the page is accessed by a human or a
search engine spider.
Search engines will penalize
sites which use black hat techniques, either by reducing their organic rankings
or even eliminating them from their database completely. This is a very costly
mistake on the business point of view as you will lose out a lot of grounds as
your competitors are enjoying free organic traffic from search engines due to
their high rankings for major key phrases. One infamous example was in February
2006, whereby Google removed BMW Germany from its database for use of black hat
methods. However, the company has quickly apologised and cleaned up the offending
pages and were eventually restored to Google's database.
Therefore, it is very
important to make sure that your SEO agency is moving away from black hat
methods. You will not want to be blacklisted by search engines which will
translate into loss in sales and profits.
Keyword Research - The Key
Factor to Successful SEO Implementation
Major search engines like
Google, Yahoo, MSN Live and AOL get a lot of searches every day. Before you
implement SEO to your website, you must know what key phrases or keywords your
target audience is using to search for the product or service that you offer.
Whether you like it or not,
there is a good chance that many people have never heard of your company. These
people might be your customers, if only they can find you on search engines and
buying from you. It is well accepted that building awareness is the first step
to land a new customer. For example, when someone sees a TV advertisement about
that new car, you hope that he or she is in the market for a car at the moment.
However, relatively few people are in that situation at any one time. Majority
of people who saw the TV advertisement have no interest in buying a car at the
moment. But someday they will. So advertisers know that the messages - the
model of the car and company name in their commercials will stick in viewers'
minds, who might remember the message later when they are ready to buy a car.
It is the same for SEO.
Searchers might not know that
your company offers a particular product or service unless they see your site
listed on the Search Engine Result Page (SERP). Unless they see your listings,
they will not think of you. Most of the time, searchers looking for a product
or service for the first time might not be aware of any specific company or
brand name as they are just gathering information. However, according to a
research done by search marketing consultancy iProspect, more than 55 percent
of searchers expect to see big brands listed at the top of search results. The
same study also shows that over 66 percent of searchers believe that sites that
are listed at the top of search results are the top companies in their field.
So can you imagine how this affects your company's brand awareness? If your
company's website is not listed at the top of search results, they will not see
your company as a "big brand" in their mind. Therefore, it is
extremely important for you to optimize keywords or key phrases that your
target prospects will use to find the product or service that you are offering.
So what types of keywords or
key phrases should you choose? Businesses should target keywords that are
relevant to the content of their websites. Basically, keywords can be
categorized into 3 types, which are: "Too Hot Keywords", "Just
Right Keywords", and "Too Cold Keywords". Too Hot keywords are
single word search terms like "Aircon" and "Translation"
which do not seem to be targeted enough to get conversions. These keywords
usually bring in high search volume (which is naturally tempting to optimize)
but the conversion may not be as ideal as targeting keywords which falls into
the "Just Right" category. (For examples: Aircon Servicing,
Translation Agency Singapore") By optimizing those "Just Right"
keywords, businesses can get more targeted traffic to their websites and increase
the chance of conversions.
Choosing the right keywords is
the real beginning of any SEO effort. After you have determined the right set
of keywords to target, you can start the work of search engine optimization.
Why do you need to
outsource SEO?
SEO is a very time-consuming
process as continual fine-tuning and monitoring need to be done. Therefore, it
is advisable for you to hire a search engine optimization agency to plan out
the optimization plan for your company.
A professional SEO agency will
look at your site and make recommendations to increase your search engine
ranking and website traffic. Once they start to optimize your website, they
will provide recommendations and monitoring reports for you to know the
progress of it.
Last but not least, in order
to achieve successful optimization results, it is very important for your SEO
agency to work closely with your website designer if you have your own IT
department. This is because your company website needs to be both visually
appealing and search engine friendly in order to achieve high organic rankings,
as well as conversions.