Search Engine Optimization, also termed “SEO” isn’t about improving or optimizing a search engine it’s about optimizing your website, video, or other digital offering you have published to the Internet. More specifically it’s about making changes to get your offering to appear on the first page and in the one of the top three spots. Learn about SEO and what it can do for you in this short article.
Depending on what you are looking to accomplish with your website being on the front page for your specific keywords isn’t always the holy grail you may think it is. There are other factors that come into play depending on what you consider success. For instance if you are interested in spreading the word about a worthy cause and you have a website dedicated to that, it may be enough just to get a visitor to the site. The fact that you have done the work to optimize your site or page to come up for the relevant term or terms may be enough in this case.
One the other hand, let’s say your defining success as an incoming lead for a venture capital company. In this case the value of a pure visitor isn’t as great, you need them to DO something, probably either call you directly right then or fill out a contact form requesting more information. The value one would measure here would be the number of opt-ins or leads generated. Improving the quality of prospects can be streamlined through various incoming search terms.
Search engine optimization has many uses and can create many results that can be very beneficial to small businesses, non-profits, professional service providers and anyone else who is looking to get the word out about something or someone. This brings to mind another important factor of SEO and one that plays a big part in the SEO industry, and that is reputation management.
Using SEO as a medium of reputation management is very effective way to influence what people read about you, your company or your products. While marketing materials, testimonials, positive feedback, and specials are all great ideas, they don’t do much good if people searching don’t see them. In a sense reputation management could be looked at as brand management. Implementing a solid search engine strategy targeting your specific company name, or trademark products is best implemented early on, as age of web pages does play a role in what results tend to rank higher in search engines.
You know your business better than anyone and right now you likely see a unique way that ranking well for certain searches could make a major difference in your business. I wanted to share some of the most common reasons people seek out search engine optimization services and how SEO can make a big difference in your business.
It was only about 6 years ago that I first asked myself, “What is SEO?” , since then I’ve mastered a “way of doing things” that is really just a SEO friendly web publishing system. I’ve been very successful in obtaining top three first page rankings for some of the most competitive terms on the Internet. Needless to say some of the highest search (and traffic generating) words are general search terms and they are very competitive. What do I mean? As and example, it would be much harder to rank for the keyword “John Deere Tractor” than it would be to rank for “ John Deere Tractors in Indiana”.
The most important thing I’ve learned about search engine optimization is that I don’t need to know everything. I just have to know how to get results. Technology is amazing and wonderful, it can also be very frustrating. The SEO industry is overflowing with technical jargon, different programming languages, and information on site structure that really doesn’t mean anything to me. The CMS or content management system that I use for all of my own sites takes care of all the technical stuff for me. Literally all I do go to the site and type or use my word processor on my laptop and the paste it to my website. I can make any changes myself (and so could you) and it doesn’t cost me a penny and I’m free of any headaches. It’s important to know that you don’t need to be an expert at this stuff, and steer clear of someone trying to bury you in information you don’t understand because it’s the most common way I’ve seen used to drive cost in search engine optimization.
