RSS Feed
The importance of SEO
Search engine optimisation, SEO, is one
of the vital aspects of any website, but it is often overlooked or
neglected. A website may look beautiful, the systems may be
flawless, but with no visitors, it is a waste. SEO is the process of
getting visitors, traffic and ultimately business to your website,
primarily through achieving high rankings for your web site on search
terms with high volume.
Studies have shown that Internet
searchers are a notoriously impatient bunch. Almost 82% of all
searchers do not go beyond the first 30 results. More than 60% don't
go beyond the first 10 results. If your website is not in the top
ten, you are missing out on over 60% of your potential clients. This
can prove to be a very costly exercise. Even if you are happy with
the traffic you get to your website, and let's say it's 40%. You can
get an extra one and a half times that quantity of visitors and
business or more as the result of an effective SEO campaign.
There is always advertising available
as an option, but that is substantially less effective and more
costly. On Google, 70% of searchers prefer the natural results to
advertisements. Say the term your site is optimised for has 100
searches a day, and you are in position 12. You'll only get 40% of
your potential visitors. If you're in position 21, you'll get about
25%. Position 31 and you'll get less than 19%. If you are number 1,
you'll get 100 of them. If you buy an advertisement, you'll get 30%
and you pay for each visitor. The moment you stop paying, you stop
getting visitors. An SEO campaign on the other hand lasts for years.
Once you are at the top, it takes a lot to move you down the
results. As such, SEO is the most cost-effective and efficient
method of marketing your website.
You also need your site to rank well
for the correct keyword or search phrase. One of my favourite
examples comes from research I have conducted into the job industry
as part of an SEO campaign. The term “search jobs” has 21
searches a day. The term “job search” has over 6000. Number 1
for “search jobs” will give you 21 visitors. Number 1 for “job
search” though will give you 6000. Choosing the right keywords is
an important part of any SEO campaign.
How do you target the site towards a
specific search phrase or keyword? By having the keyword in the
title tag, the description and in the content. It should also be in
the anchor text of links pointing to that site. If you are in a
reciprocal link exchange, and the link to your job site is the name
of your company, that is far less effective at promoting your website
than a link saying “job search – company name.” It's a simple
step and seemingly obvious, but many website owners do not do that
and their site suffers in it's ranking as a result.
With the right proportion of the key
word in relation to your content and sufficient inbound links with
the right anchor text, your website can become the number 1 site for
that term. There is more to SEO than just that, but those are the 2
essential factors. Without good content, or links, your website will
never rank well and will never bring in all the business it could.
For more info, check out <a href='http://www.sigil.co.za'>SEO -
Sigil Online</a>
