Search Engine Marketing - Part 1

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SEO is an abbreviation of Search Engine Optimisation which is a form of search engine marketing or internet marketing. If you have a website, and you want people to find it, then it needs to be optimised for the search engines. In the world of IT this is known as SEO. You can liken SEO to the engine of a car. The website being the nice colourful bodywork and the SEO being the engine. A car wouldn't go without an engine; a website will not go without SEO. You can't have one without the other unless you're happy for you website to just sit there. You can always tell people where it is. But if you want people you don't know to find your website you need it optimised. As well as making your site visible in the search engines, SEO done well actually promotes your website and business which brings traffic which leads to sales. SEO makes webpage's come up in the natural/organic listings in Google underneath the sponsored ads.

So how is it done? Well the first thing you need to know is that a search engine analysis's text. So you need to make sure your webpage is really telling us what the page is about. If you have ...
... just a few words and it takes a user a long time to find out what that page is about then a search engine will struggle. The page really has to shout out what it's about. So make sure the keywords (the words you want to be found on Google) are in the headings, titles and body of the text. You can test this using a child. Ask a child that is older than 10 who can read reasonably well if they can tell you what a webpage is about, if they can't, then it's probably likely a search engine wouldn't either, unless of course it's a subject the child wouldn't understand. Or print the page off, and if you can tell what the page is about within 3-5 seconds then a search engine should. This sounds simple enough and it is, but so many people don't make it clear.

Now text is just one aspect, the other is link popularity. This in a nutshell is having as many other webpage's pointing to yours in the form of a working hyperlink (where you click on a bit of text and it takes you to another page). You can liken this part of SEO to being popular at school. If you are friends with the popular kids then you get some creditability. The exactly the same can be said of SEO, the more friends (links) you have with the 'in' (high link popularity sites) websites the more creditability your site will have.

SEO is a specialised subject and should only be carried out by an expert, or with the help of one. It is undoubtedly the best and only way to drive traffic to your site, SEO is an investment. You get far more conversions with SEO and you are building your site/brand which can't be done with sponsored ads/PPC (see part 2).....
Carolyn Clayton who is based in the UK has worked in SEO for 4 years and offers Ethical SEO Services. For SEO Midlands and worldwide contact Carolyn at Ethical SEO today.