With millions of existing websites and thousands more being created every day, the World Wide Web has seen exponential growth since the early 90s. This is where Search Engine Optimization (S E O) comes in.
In the face of these statistical odds, a serious problem arises for website owners, and marketers on the Internet. How to be found by potential customers, amongst the millions of websites, and counting.
This question has spawned a billion dollar industry, through the concept of search, that has seen giant companies evolve from operating inside a garage, in the case of Google, to becoming global players, for a service that is in high demand and indispensable for most. So, what is Search Engine Optimization anyway?
Before we can understand what search engine optimization is all about, it is important to grasp how search engines work. When you are searching for something using a search engine, you expect results that are relevant to you by providing the search engine with a short phrase.
The search engine then has the monumental task of bringing you results that it “thinks” are relevant to you, in a fraction of a second of searching. The task is monumental because, behind the scenes, a powerful network of computers coordinates the process of identifying pages, that are related to your search, by going through an index that the search engine maintains.
Once a set of results has been curated, each one has to be ranked and sorted, such that the most relevant appear at the top of your results page. An algorithm that uses the content of each page, and how often the page has been linked on other websites, along with other data such as the location and language of the searcher, ranks the results by relevance. This is the challenge for the search engines, to which they have arisen with grace.
You may learn more about how search engines work by referring to the blog post titled, The Anatomy of Search.
Customers can be brought to a website through search, either organically, or through paid search. Organic search brings up results on relevance alone, whilst for paid search, advertisers pay the search engine to display the particular results to you.
What makes search remarkable, however, is the fact that it is highly targeted. When people input keywords into a search bar, they are looking for something very specific. This is vastly different from other forms of advertising, where you are trying to catch the attention of potential customers, and then influence them to be interested in your product or service.
From an advertiser, rather than eliciting interest, the search space is concerned with the primary task of being found and being relevant.
The challenge for the website owner and marketer, is to become the most relevant result for certain keywords, that potential customers use in their search. Going back to the statistical odds I mentioned earlier, when it comes to the sheer number of websites out there, it should be clear that this is a tall order.
If you are in the fast food business for example. You ideally would like to appear as the first result when people search for “fast food restaurant”. If not the top result, then it is better to be second, or third, or at least appear on the first page of search results.
The truth is, most searchers rarely go beyond the first page of search results. A search engine is like a giant electronic phone book, if you are old enough to remember those. The exception that you might have to start from the first page, and flip to all the pages in-between, to get to the page that has the information you need, even if that information is on page 100, or beyond.
It goes without question that, Search Engine Optimization is something every website owner should consider doing. Depending on your financial disposition, and how much time you have on your hands, you may choose to do it yourself, or hire someone else to do it. If you decide to go with the latter option, be warned that you should be prepared to part with a fair amount of your earnings, to get the job done.
If you decide to go at it alone, you should invest a great deal of time in self-education to learn the intricacies of S E O. Whether you decide to hire someone to handle S E O for your website, or go the D I Y route, you should be realistic about your expectations, in terms of how long it takes to see the desired results.
In either case, some education on the subject is vital. In the case where you are doing it yourself, it is vital to self-educate, so that you may know the how-to aspect of it. And in the case of hiring someone, it is important to self-educate so that you understand what your hired help is doing, and also be able to communicate with them effectively, on the subject. Educating yourself also means you are in a better position to make informed hiring decisions.
A cornerstone to having a good Search Engine Optimization campaign, is to have the right content in place. If you are promoting a clothing business, it helps to write on related subjects, and post them on your website. You need to write and write regularly. If this sounds daunting, remember that you do not necessarily have to write the articles yourself, you may delegate this task to someone else.
Content is important because it helps in the ranking of your website. Search engines send out crawlers. Which are automated browsers or robots, that go out and visit websites, to find out what content is out there. The content that these robots gather is analysed by the search engine, in order to rank the content according to relevance.
The philosophy behind the ranking of content, on search engines is to provide people with results that are useful. Accordingly, you need content related to the services you are providing to get better results in your S E O campaign.
Another important consideration in Search Engine Optimization is link building. This is about your “street cred”. When search engines crawl the web, they take note of how often a website is mentioned on other websites, and use it a strong indicator of how useful the website is.
The thinking behind this is that, no one will link to your website unless they found it useful, and the more people link to it, the stronger they indication that it is a valuable resource, and should rank higher than websites that a linked to less other sites.
In S E O, you or your hired help, will have to be engaged in relationship building activities in order to have other websites link back to yours, in what are known as back-links.
Search Engine Optimization should never be thought of as something to finish. Because the Web is a dynamic thing. Always changing, always growing, Search Engine Optimization should always be thought of as a work in progress. The content is continuously created and edited, in order to stay relevant, and the link building activities are always underway, in order to improve your website’s back-link profile.
At the risk of sounding like a pessimist, I have to once again point out that S E O is not a walk in the park. It requires commitment and dedication. It is crucial to set realistic goals, and meet them. If you are failing to meet your goals, it is time to make adjustments until you get it right.
If done right, Search Engine Optimization will bring high value customers to a website and ensure that the business thrives and grows.
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