Search Engine Optimisation has become a key marketing strategy for business owners looking to increase lead generation through what is called organic traffic. Or in other words, the traffic that is generated through people using a search engine such as Google to find a product or service that they require.
By developing and implementing a good SEO strategy you can usually improve your ranking in the search engines and increase the number of visitors to your website. If you’re not very familiar with SEO then you might feel like you need to understand the basics before you get to the point where you can develop your SEO strategy.
Who needs SEO?
To be frank, anybody who wants to increase the number of visitors to their website needs to get up to speed with SEO principles and methods. One of the real difficulties about learning SEO techniques is that the likes of Google are constantly moving the goalposts. As people become more and more familiar with what techniques work successfully, changes will be made behind the scenes to keep marketers on their toes.
Due to the changes that are frequently made, it is not enough to understand what the techniques are today, it is a constant requirement to keep up to date with the latest SEO trends. Having said that, there are a number of standard methods that continue to be successful.
Here are a few of the key SEO principles, to give you some inspiration:
Create Great Content – The content on your website is a key player and the more good quality content you have, the higher you will feature in the search engines. Keeping content up to date and relevant will also help, so make sure you refresh your content regularly.
Keywords – Keywords are the words that people type into the search engine, so it is important to understand how these work. You can find tools that will help you to identify the most common keywords used in relation to your product/service. If you are a local builder in Sunderland for example, the keywords could be ‘Builder Sunderland’. Similarly, if you offer SEO services in the Bath area, then ‘SEO Bath’ is likely to come up.
Use the keywords within your content, including in page titles, image alt etc. to improve the rankings. Don’t overdo it with the keywords though, as you can also get penalized if it looks like you are trying to cram keywords into your content.
Links – Another fundamental element of SEO is the creation of links, or link building as it is commonly known. Increase the likelihood of people finding your site by having other sites linking back to you. Search engines ‘crawl’ across the Internet and if popular/authoritative sites link to your site then your ranking will reflect this.
This is really just a taster of the big world of SEO but hopefully this has given you enough insight to show you that if you’re not investing time and effort into SEO then it’s time that you start to.
