What SEO can do for you

In this guest post, Techistan’s Susan Kennedy explains why your SEO strategy commands your constant attention.

Wikipedia defines search engine optimization as the procedure of raising the levels or traffic quality (traffic being visitors) to a website from the natural unpaid search engine rankings. In reality there are a lot more facets to it than just that.

SEO is generally split into two camps:

1) Page optimization;

2) Off page optimization.

Search engine optimization must be continually worked on. But why would you need to do that? To stay ahead of your competition by coming higher than them in the rankings list.

No matter what you think of them, Google are the king of the search engines. Everyone wants to get to the top of them. According to the Cornell eye tracking study the site listed in the No. 1 position in Google gets 50% of the clicks. The site listed in number 10 gets a meagre 2%. More clicks = more traffic. More traffic = more sales. That is if you have what the customers are looking for. And how exactly is SEO performed? There is a lot of info out there you can read up on, it’s best to educate yourself a little about it. That way you will have a good grounding in it. Most highly competitive websites employ SEO firms to do a lot of the work. In the know smaller scale businesses also contract out SEO work to SEO firms as the financial rewards outstrip the initial costs.

On page optimization refers to having the appropriate domain name, content, page titles, keyword tags and descriptive tags placed inside your website html code. On page work is easier to address than off page optimization which involves link building and promotion.

Off page promotion should be carried out as long as you maintain an internet presence, so if you’re planning to stick around for a while on the net, add it to your itinerary. If you don’t keep up with your off page optimization work your competition can soon outstrip you in the search engine ranking results.

If you are going to start a new business or simply want to start performing really well on the internet you should have an optimization analysis with a SEO consultant. They can look at the market for you and let you know how competitive it is and whether you can expect to rank in the short or long term for specific keywords. With this early assessment you can determine whether it is wise to go after a certain area of business or diversify into a more profitable area.