A tool for bringing more traffic to your webpage.
SEO – (Search Engine Optimisation) is the process of making sure that a certain website can be found through search engines using certain words or phrases that may be relevant to the websites content. It’s basically a tool for driving more traffic to your website from search engines such as Google, Yahoo search and so forth.
For arguments sake let us consider the Google search engine. Google loves good SEO because it helps its users find relevant content easily through any search term. Of course this means that Google users benefit by having quick access to relevant and specific content that they are looking for.
It also helps companies creating the content by making their site accessible through Google.
It’s a win, win.. win situation!
So why is SEO so important?
Imagine (and stick with me on this one), you have an amazingly well designed high street shop which absolutely represents the customers you are targeting. You know your customers will love your products and will be more than happy to pay for great service and quality.
Sounds fantastic right?
So now imagine that your shop is impossible to find… People search the high street for it because they’ve heard of your brand but they just can’t find it. After a while they head elsewhere, more than likely to your competitors.
Essentially, without ongoing SEO this is what can happen online!
How does SEO work?
Search engines such as Google have what is commonly known as Spiders or “Google Bots”. Spiders crawl across the internet looking at the content on each webpage, they then link this webpage to the keywords used within its content.
This is then reported back to Google where they determine if the webpage is relevant and authoritative to these keywords. For example, a keyword search of “Football Boots” would normally bring up a familiar website that is a sports retail shop, or a big brand, like Nike or Adidas. This is because these sites have set up links and created a lot of great content about football boots that consequently, a lot of people read. The content gets shared and linked from other websites, which creates links back to the original site. Google Bots or Spiders recognise the original creator of this content and therefore promote you to the top of the search! (Phew!)
Because sites like Nike and Adidas are known throughout the web to be a good manufacturer of football boots, it counts towards its authoritative status, making it a good website for Google to promote to the top of its relevant searches.
What good SEO really comes down to is creating great content that’s relevant to what you are offering. Make it so great that other creators, advocates and recognisable figures will want to share it. You’ll start getting yourself known in relevant communities and it’ll begin to take off from there. You’ll be at the top of Google and various other search engines in no time and your invisible shop we referred to earlier will be covered in neon signs making sure you never go unnoticed!
