What is SEO?

You've done it. We've done it too. In fact, we do it every single day. Multiple times each day, to tell you the truth. And millions of others do it too. It's a tough habit to break. What are we talking about? Using search engines.

Every day, millions of people use Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and other various search engines to gather information for an array of purposes. Consumers use search engines at an alarming rate to research the products and services they're considering purchasing and to find the best companies to buy them from.

What does this mean for your business?

If you don't have a strong presence in the search engines, you're missing out on opportunities to gain new customers every single day. And if you're not attracting searchers, guess who is? Your competition.

Thanks to your inactivity in the search engines, your competitors are lining their pockets.

SEO Helps You Increase Your Search Engine Rankings

The good news is that if your search engine presence is currently lacking, you can change that. With SEO (that stands for search engine optimisation), you can make your website more visible to the search engines.

See, the goal of any search engine is to provide the most relevant results possible to users. So, whenever someone searches for “red widgets” the search engines want to return a list of websites about “red widgets.”

But if your website isn’t properly optimised, the search engines won't know that it's about red widgets, and as a result, your website won't show up in the search results.

This, of course, begs the question: How can you optimise your website to make it more visible to the search engines?

On-Page Factors That Influence Search Rankings

There are certain things you need to do on your website to make it easier for you to rank well for relevant search terms (or keywords).

First, the way your website is built matters. SEO needs to be woven into the very foundation of your website. If your site isn't coded properly, it might as well be invisible to the search engines.

Here's an example. The search engines actually have a very hard time reading Flash websites. If your website is Flash-based, the search engines will most likely be unable to determine what your website is about. They won't know how to classify your site, and as a result, you won’t have a strong search engine presence, no matter how “cool” your website looks. And what's the point of having a cool-looking Flash website, if nobody can find it?

The content on your website matters as well. It's important that your website content is optimised for the keywords searchers use when trying to find your products and services. So, if you have a page on your website devoted to the “red widgets” you sell, that page should include the term “red widgets” a reasonable amount of times.

These are just a couple of the on-page factors that influence your website's visibility in the search engines.

Off-Page Factors That Influence Search Rankings

Having a well-optimised website is no longer enough to achieve and maintain top search rankings. Off-site SEO matters too.

An important part of the algorithm that Google uses when ranking websites is the number of quality inbound links that website has. In other words, the more links you have from other websites, the better your rankings will be, in theory.

Of course, there are some caveats. Your links should come from reputable, relevant websites. They should be natural (not paid for) links. And ideally, they should contain a keyword in the link that explains what the target page is about.

A good SEO company will be able to help with all aspects of your SEO campaign, from making sure your website is properly optimized to helping you get more links from quality sources.

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