What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
SEO is the art and process of positioning your site to rank highly on the search
engines. There are many factors that go into this process and each search engine
uses a different mathematical formula to evaluate sites. This formula is updated
from time-to-time, which means you can be number 3 for a major keyword today and
number 303 tomorrow if you fail to properly interpret a change to the ranking formulas
being used.
Search engine optimization (SEO) may best be described as the art and science of
optimizing your website hosting, design, content and promotion, with the goal of
increasing the number of visitors to your site by placing higher on search engines.
A quick word about search engines. There are literally thousands of search engines.
Regardless of what you think, use or have heard, only three really matter - Google,
Yahoo and MSN. Google controls the most traffic on the web with Yahoo running a
distant second and MSN even further behind. If you want a lot of people to visit
your site, you really have to try to get ranked on Google and Yahoo above all else.
There are a number of factors that go into SEO and getting ranked highly on the
major search engines. They include things such as the code being used on your site
[Flash is disfavored], the amount and type of text used, the number of times a keyword
phrase appears on a page, link counts and so on. The trick with SEO is to balance
these factors to produce high rankings for a site.
In global terms, SEO is the act and art of getting as many pages of a site ranked
on the first page of results returned for certain pages on Google and Yahoo. Once
these rankings are obtained, the rankings produce free traffic to the site for as
long as the rankings remain. Google can be a bit twitchy, but Yahoo usually is very
stable.
Advantages of SEO
The advantages of SEO are numerous and far reaching for any site that obtains the
rankings it seeks on Google, Yahoo and MSN.
The primary advantage of SEO over any other type of internet marketing is found
in the long-term aspects. Once your site is ranked in the top 10 for your keyword
phrase, you should be able to keep it there with a minimum of fuss. This means that
you will receive free traffic from prospects 24 hours a day, seven days a week,
52 weeks a year for as long as you keep your site up.
Return on investment is another one of the advantages of SEO over paid advertising.
SEO can take time to produce rankings, so the initial return on your investment
in it is poor. Once rankings are obtained, however, the return on investment becomes
excellent as you receive a large volume of free traffic. In contrast, paid web advertising
produces more upfront, but caps your profitability in the long term. Why? Well,
you are always going to be paying for the traffic. In two years, you will be paying
the same or more for the identical traffic you are getting today. With SEO, you
will not.
How Your Site Will Benefit From SEO?
SEO is the art and process of getting a site ranked on the first page of results
for various keyword phrase searches on Google, Yahoo and so on. For instance, the
keyword phrase for our home page is "seo services". This means we want to appear
on the first page of results when someone does a search for this phrase on the search
engines. Once we get our rankings into the top 10, we can count on getting visitors
to our site each and every day as long as we maintain the rankings. This is also
how your site will benefit from SEO.
Think for a moment about your site. Define it. If you had to pick any one to three
world phrase to describe it, what would it be? Now think about how people would
search for it. If you can get ranked in the top 10 for that phrase, you will be
providing web surfers with the solution to their problem.
Once you have rankings, You can maintain them with a nominal amount of effort. This
means you will effectively receive free traffic and potential clients each and every
day, 365 days a year, every year. That is how a site benefits in the long-term from
SEO.
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