S . E . O .

Search Engine Optimization, or S.E.O., is an important, and in fact vital, part of any business’s online presence. Put simply, S.E.O. is the “tweaking” of a website so that it’ll be displayed right at the top of a search engine’s results pages (y’know, on that first page of results you get on Google, Yahoo! or Bing etc. when you key in a search phrase or words and hit “Search”). This optimization is an important aspect of any kind of search engine marketing that you do; the ultimate aim being to achieving the highest ranking possible for your targeted keywords and phrases.

Basically, it works like this: When an Internet user runs a search using a search engine they’ll more than likely only look over the first page of results laid out before them. Typically, they’ll then either follow a link they found on that first page or they’ll have another go and try another search. They’d only very, very rarely make it as far as the barren wastelands of Page 3. What this means is, if your website is not among the first listed in the search results, its chances of being found by potential customers are actually quite slim. Basically, there is little point in making a website submission to search engines if your site will never appear in the first few pages of results. Sorry.

By taking the time to think about the writing, formatting, and organization of your website and making the appropriate adjustments for S.E.O. purposes, your website will become more “digestible” by search engines and will be ranked more favorably in their databases. The result is, with a little work (and it isn’t that much work that you gotta do), your site will be able to climb from the depths of search engine results Hell (page 2,569), right to the top of the list (page 1, yeah!). This search engine placement will be highly beneficial for any entity seeking a truly strong presence online.

The truth of the matter is that the vast majority of websites on the Internet are not optimized with the search engines in mind. The result here is that your competitors who DO posses well optimized sites will dominate the web traffic generated through the search engines. By optimizing your own site, you and your company can leapfrog the competition and direct traffic away from competitors and toward your own site. After the site is optimized it actually takes very little maintenance to keep your company’s ranking and the effect of the optimization can be seen immediately and for years to come.

Now, whether you’ve hired an S.E.O. guru or decided to attempt the S.E.O. work yourself, one of the major challenges of a great search engine optimization campaign is determining how much time to devote to specific techniques and certain areas of your website. Simply knowing what to do doesn’t really solve the problem of understanding how much to do (it’s that old conundrum: how much is too much?). Whether it’s keyword research, website title optimization, content development or even link building, often the missing link is the art of knowing which of your efforts will yield the greatest return on your investment of money and/or time.