Everyday, there are approximately, 2 to 3 billion online searches on the net and social media sites which show that there’s unlimited opportunity. But to take advantage of that opportunity, it is vital to rank high in the search engines, to leverage social media and other strategies to make sure your website turns visitors into leads and sales.
Search engines (Google, Bing & Yahoo) have become the main resource for individuals to look for businesses. Search engines have become the “new yellow pages”. Companies do not need to spend thousands of dollars on print ads in directories and magazines. Today the way to do it is through search engine optimization (SEO) strategies.
What is S E O?
Search engine optimization is to put through a process of getting a website or webpage to be easily found in searches and to rank higher in search engines—such as Google, Yahoo or Bing.
The earlier a website appears on the page, or the higher it is ranked on a page, in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users. SEO can be geared to target different kinds of search, including images, local search, video search, academic search, news search and industry-specific search. A website easily found based on any search gives it web presence.
When Internet users search for your products or services, your website needs to be the first one they find. SEO helps the search engines recognize your relevance to specific keywords that people search for online. The search engine optimization process includes researching keywords relevant to what your company provides and what you want to rank for, creating relevant and value content, and building links which will ensure your website is visible in the search engines.
However ranking high on search engines is very complicate and a constantly changing process. Many factors contribute to the quality of a website and how the search engines perceive it. The way a website is ranked by a search engine also differs one from another because they prioritize factors differently and update their algorithms constantly. The factors that contribute to high search ranks fall into three categories : keyword, on-page SEO and off-page SEO.
Keyword research is vital and most important first step in any SEO campaign. Brainstorming and researching for all the possible relevant keywords and phrases, especially “long tail” keywords that will point specifically to a particular product or service a company supplies. Example, we want to rank for “SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION”; for long tail keywords we could target the following: “How do I rank on page 1 of Google”; “rank better in search engines” and “search engine ranking”.
Once a list is gathered through the use of a keyword tool e.g. Google keyword tool, the list is filtered to find the most relevant, less competitive keywords which have high volume of searches per month. The aim is not just to get high traffic but the right targeted high traffic which can be converted from leads to paying customers.
On-page SEO. This is the process of optimizing the page of a website especially the “home” page, or on the most noticeable places of a website, with specific keywords that are relevant to the business, product or services, which will make it search engine friendly. An optimized website makes it easy for the search engine to find and re-visit it, “crawl” links and detect keyword phrases. There are three elements that contribute to on-page SEO : “crawl ability”, search visibility, and keywords optimization.
“Crawl ability” refers to how easily a search engine can extract new content from a website. In order to enable this, the website must have relevant text links or hyperlinks that contain text in navigation of the site. Even the URL should have concise keywords to enable the search engines to decipher what the page is about. The URL should only have text and not include symbols e.g. question mark.
For search visibility, which refer to whether search engines recognize easily a website and it’s contents. Any changes to a website design, content or just one character in the URL destroys the visibility. In view of this, it is better to have an experienced expert managing the design and content of the site to maintain and increase search visibility.
In keyword optimization, after the relevant keywords are thoroughly researched and finalized for use on the website, the keywords used in the right places in order for the search engines to identify them as keywords. Based on a survey with experts in online marketing, the keywords placed in the following places will impact positive correlations to search rankings:
Page title, name of a root domain, anchor texts in links, meta description, and alt text to be used to describe images. Keywords must of course also be used on the main body content of the website.
Off-page SEO means link-building. Link-building constitutes 75% of what helps a site rank high in the search engines. High quality inbound links are crucial to the ranking of a website, e.g. a link from a page of The Herald. The higher the quality or quantity of the inbound links a page receives, the more credibility the search engines assign to that page and the higher it’s ranking.
In order to get good inbound links, a website should have good resources and valuable content. Thus content production is important to link building. Inbound links from third party help to boost search ranking. Content promotion on social media sites are good examples of this form of links.
To measure results of a SEO campaign for ROI.
For this consider the metrics of indexed pages, crawling errors and webmaster tool reports, site rankings, inbound links in terms of quantity, quality, and longevity, keywords, referrals from search, and many more.
Businesses can track their search traffic on a monthly or daily basis, by using a customer management system . A business can visualize the effectiveness of search engine optimization in driving business growth only by watching the trends of changes in search traffic and corresponding lead conversions.
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