SEO Basics

If your business has a website, there is a good chance that by now you have heard of SEO or search engine optimization. You were also most likely told that this type of online marketing can bring quality traffic to your website and improve your business. So what exactly is search engine optimization and how can it help your business?

SEO is the process of making a site and its content highly relevant for both search engines and searchers. There are two primary methods to get top positions within search engine results pages. Major search engines typically display search results as a combination of sponsored listings and free (organic) listings. So, you can either bid your way to the top immediately within the sponsored listings or optimize your site to appear in the free listings with the help of search engine optimization. Successful search marketing helps a site gain top positioning for relevant keywords and key phrases in search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and others.

What are the sponsored listings? Sponsored listings are obtained when you pay or bid on a particular keyword or position within a search results page. These listings take up a small portion of the search engine results area because the larger portion is reserved for free listings.

What are the types of search engine optimization? Search engine optimization is usually divided into two sub-categories: on-site optimization, otherwise known as natural optimization and off-site optimization or link building. On-site optimization focuses on improve your website's layout, content, etc. Off-site optimization improves your search engine position by building up links pointing to your website from other websites.

What are the keywords and why are they important? Keywords are the words and phrases that a searcher uses when looking in search engines like Google for some product, service or information. Each search for a given keyword yields thousands and sometimes even millions of web pages. Some of them are more relevant then others and that's why some are positioned lower in the result pages. The keywords you are planning to optimize for must be highly relevant to your business. Otherwise the visitors you are going to get will not improve your sales.

I have very little content on my website. Is that a problem for search engines? Yes, it might affect your relevancy for the keywords you have picked out. Keyword-rich content is an important factor in SEO. Search engines, especially MSN and Yahoo, love lots and lots of content. You want your website to be seen as an authority in its subject matter. If you want your visitors to keep coming back then you need to make sure that your content is interesting and fresh. Even if your site is retail, attempt to include as much quality content as possible about your products. Make your site a resource. If you website is lacking good, informative content, consider hiring professional to develop your content for you. A lot of search engine marketing companies also perform keyword-rich content development as a part of search engine optimization process.

I want to optimize my website for search engines. How do I go about it? There is basically two ways you can go about optimizing your website for search engines. You can either try doing it yourself or hire a professional SEO specialist to do it for you. Simply put, if your budget can afford an SEO company, hire one. Otherwise, be prepared to spend a few months just researching and learning before you even begin. For most business owners that have little experience with search engine marketing and little time to learn necessary SEO tricks, the best solution is to hire a specialist.