SEO is one of the most important factors in your website being found online. Although not the most exotic thing to study soonheless it's something a rookie can learn quickly. As of 2010 there are over 48.4 million newspaper readers. Only 285 million watch TV every month. But how many watch commercials?
However over 14 billion do a core search on Google. So do the math. Build a permanent presence on the net or spend truckloads of cash on the obsolete methods of advertising. In the world of search engines Google is the still the king.
Recently, a study done by Forbes was done and senior level advertising executives stated SEO was the most effective use of advertising revenue. I speak to companies everyday that are in some cases spending huge amounts of money on a PPC campaign and by implementing some basic SEO techniques are able to get a much better results than their PPC campaigns. Organic results are looked 75% more than PPC. Organic search results consistently give better conversion rates for companies with the least expenditure. And it's permanent. PPC stops the day you stop the AdWords.
Jandofabrics.com was spending money on a PPC campaign. By implementing a CMS (content management strategy) and continually adding high quality backlinks they showed a 214% increase in their web presence and gained over 5,000 inbound links. It's more like building something that last and lasts as opposed to the type of advertising we are used to in the past that was simply transported over to the internet. Reminds of the barns in Ohio painted with the tobacco ads still there a hundred years later.
Even with a brand new start up an entrepreneur by mastering a few SEO tactics and a lot of work can succeed in getting ranked high on the search engines for their key words. A girl I was told about starting a social marketing campaign, started link building and implemented a content management system and their traffic increased by over 4,000% (smart-kit.com). The added bonus was their advertising budget was reduced to almost zero. "Online puzzles" which was one of their main key words shown up consistently
And they dominated the market.
We've looked at a couple examples of what you should do with SEO. What about the negative side of the equation. Google has to be able to read your HTML code or you can appear as a scam. If your coding is not done properly you can end up with a disaster. Another item most people do not realize is that Google does NOT see pictures. As pretty as they are and eye catching they are for your visitors just be aware that they do not help you with SEO.
Something else to be aware of is that when someone makes a query on a search engine you are not searching the web in real time. What you are seeing in the results is a copy of what the spiders collect last
Time they searched the web. What this means to you is that you want there to be coherence between what the search and what is being fed into your website. I have heard that there are as many as 500 points that are looked at in a nano second before results are returned. Bottom line if this is a little technical let me say it in plain English: Make it easy on the search engines. How? 1. Find 2. Index 3. Categorize 4. Rank web content
In the word of SEO you can make a lot of mistakes and forget a lot of thing but one word to remember is CONTENT. Google craves content like a crack head craves a fix. Much can be forgiven except content. The content for website needs to be impossible. The search engines have to be able to find your content and it needs to be added to constantly. It needs to be logical and incoming links and it has to tested and monitored. Finally the fact that the quality and quantity of links should be kept in mind and that any incoming leads be capitalized to their sites.
Think of the search engines as a judge who makes it's mind on who is important and who is not based on the items stated above. Back links that are coherent in keywords and content will raise your authority and will you rise organically in the rankings. Many of you may have run PPC's (paid per click) campaigns. PPC are the paid ads that run down the right side and above the organically searched leads. If these are done properly they can be affected however they are expensive and only carry 25% of the views online. And they are "hard sell" as opposed to "soft sell."
Without the copy and landing page is absolutely compelling they have gone the way of most other advertising which is into the ditch. Most consumers are immune to "pushing" advertising of any sort. And we know nobody wants to be sold but everyone loves to buy. And as mentioned before the moment the money stops the ads stop.
A few final tidbits is you can become a validated Webmaster with Google and trending items data from universal search results such as news items, videos, books will bring your site up higher in the rankings. The main thing is that have to be relevant to the other links. Although this may seem overwhelming it is NOT rocket science and a novice can learn it quickly. In summary, you want everything you do in the area of to make not only value to your readers but also stops Google and causes it to look at your site.
