SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimisation, which in the most basic sense means improving/optimising your website for search engines (i.e. Google, Yahoo etc) – so that you get more traffic from ‘organic’ search results. ‘Organic’ results refer to those which occur naturally – as opposed to sponsored links that are paid for (info on sponsored links/pay per click can be found under Search Engine Marketing).
Below is a practical example of this, using the most popular search engine, Google. You will see at the very top, and on the right hand side, ‘Sponsored links’, whereby the company pays to appear. Below the top sponsored links are the ‘Organic’ search results. You can’t pay to automatically appear in the organic search results. Your site needs to be considered highly relevant for the terms being searched, to rank highly amongst search engine results.
Typically, the earlier a site appears in the list of search results list, the more visitors/potential leads it will receive from the search engine. Most companies with a website (generally) want more traffic to their website; therefore the aim of SEO is to appear closer to the top, thus capturing the most visitors/potential leads. However in saying this, SEO is not always the best internet marketing strategy for a business. Sponsored links and banner advertising can also be highly effective depending on how they are implemented.
There are various things that can be done to improve your search ranking for various key words. However one of the most important parts of this process, in my opinion, is understanding the keywords that the clients you want are searching for. Giving the example of a personal trainer, one may assume that someone looking for this type of service will merely type the words ‘personal trainer’ into a search engine. However this may not be as simple as it sounds. They may be searching other key words or phrases, such as ‘fitness training’, ‘group fitness’, ‘weight loss coach’ before they actually get to the website of a personal trainer. As an Internet marketing strategy, part of SEO is considering what people search for in conjunction with how search engines work.
Most websites can benefit from some cleverly applied SEO techniques. You may be surprised at the types of companies that overlook the important of having a good, optimized website. Often style is put over substance, and whilst a website may be flashy and look fabulous, it may not rank highly on search engines, simply because it was never designed with search engines in mind.
Simple changes such as regularly updating textual and image content, increasing content through blogs, writing content utilizing key words and implementing alt image tags can make huge changes to your search ranking. Pod Publicity can implement SEO techniques as part of an integrated marketing campaign, or can undertake it as a single service.
If you’d like me to have a look at your company website to see if I can help you to optimize it for search engines, please contact me. .
The difference between paid and organic search results