What Is Search Engine Optimization?
A Brief Overview
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of methods aimed at improving the ranking of a website in search engine listings. The term also refers to the consultants that carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients' sites.
Using search engines, visitors can find sites in a variety of ways: via paid-for advertisements in the search engine results pages (SERPs), via third parties who are listed in the search engines, or via "organic" listings, i.e. the results the search engines present users. SEO is primarily concerned with improving the visibility of a site in the organic search results.
Opportunities for Your Business
Introduction
The process of preparing and registering a website with directories and search engines is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This is a constantly changing process that demands the performer to stay on top of search engine/directory development at all times. The ultimate goal of SEO is to achieve top listings in the search engines for selected keywords within the interest area of the site. SEO is done through a selected combination of keyword implementation in the site's source code, or through gateway pages, doorway pages, or linkage to the target site. These methods will be further discussed in this document.
Importance
With the high number of sites being published on the Internet at a daily increasing rate, creating a web presence solution alone will not guarantee improved business results for clients of iCaboodleSites. It is in our clients' utmost interest that their sites be visible to their prospects. An invisible site is of little or no use, and does not utilize the full market potential a website is capable of. There are basically two ways to obtain awareness about websites. One is through traditional marketing (television, radio, newspaper, banners, billboards, and direct marketing ads), and the other way is through search engines. While traditional marketing is important, search engines create more awareness than all traditional marketing channels do combined. Take a look at the statistics below: (IMT Strategies)
How websites are discovered
• Search engines 52%
• Random Surfing 19%
• Word of mouth 16%
• Magazines 4%
• By accident 2%
• Television 1%
• Newspapers 1%
• E-mail 1%
• Web banners 1%
• Other 3%
Web presence must be considered a marketing channel equal to traditional media. An estimated total of 400 million people worldwide currently have access to the Internet. With that figure in mind, the potential audience for a web site should be considered very large. This means that the more visible the site is, the more traffic it will receive. More traffic means greater audience awareness of the business our clients engage in, and ultimately the potential for increased business is greatened. Through SEO, a site has a much greater potential of generating business than a site that is not optimized.
As a marketing channel with the potential of reaching a very broad audience, the Internet offers a unique opportunity for a business to focus on branding. Massive exposure produces awareness, which is the key element in marketing. While the nature of traditional media marketing is largely static, Internet marketing is 100 percent dynamic. Web site content can be updated constantly, making it easier to target a audience.
Search engines versus directories
Even though search engine is the generic term for all online services that offer keyword search for information, there is a difference between search engines and directories.
Directories are generally indexed by real human beings. A person will physically explore the submitted site and place it accordingly in a directory. Yahoo is one example of such a directory. Search engines, on the other hand, rely on programmed robots to the exploring and indexing. These robots are called spiders. Spiders scan the pages of the Internet, looking for certain information, which is then analyzed and logged. The capacity of a spider is great. Several hundred thousand pages are scanned every day, and many of them follow links and find information independently. This means that a spider can index a page even if it is not manually submitted to a search engine. A recently published site should in theory show up on the search engine database as soon as it is updated; however, the delay in reality ranges from a few days up to several months.
What Spiders Want
When spiders go through a site, they decide the relevancy based on keywords and phrases found throughout the site. Certain factors cause the awarding of points, which in the end make up the relevancy and placement of the site when indexed.
These factors include:
Number of times keywords are repeated
Where keywords appear
How keywords are positioned in relation to one another
This is where the performer of SEO becomes important. The spiders do not only award points for keyword usage; they also penalize sites for improper keyword usage. Repetition of popular search term keywords can, and most likely will, be caught by spiders as attempt of spamming. Balance is key. A variety of locations within a site can contain keywords. Focus for the client should be on which keywords to include and optimize for. Spiders are not ignorant and stupid; they will easily understand if they are being spammed. Certain words, especially words of pornographic nature, will function as stop words and ultimately lead to banning of the site. There are many other considerations to include when optimizing the keywords of a site. Form and length of content, headers, URLs, tags, links, pictures, graphics, tables, frames, and comments, are of great importance for the outcome. The page design and placement of content also matters to the spiders' overall opinion of a site.
The general rule it that important content should always be placed first. Other ways of optimizing for search engines, are to create doorway pages and gateway pages.
Doorway pages are separate pages optimized for a specific keyword or phrase. It is simple (small size, with minimal graphics) and contains linkage to the main site. If done tastefully, a doorway page pinpointed information that is always fresh. Modern technology has produced tools that let businesses monitor web site audience attention, habits, and response. Advanced reports generated by these tools are powerful when planning future marketing strategies.
Natural (Organic) Search Engine Results
High rankings in the organic search results can provide targeted traffic for a site. Obtaining that traffic by other means can potentially be expensive. For particularly competitive terms, the cost per click can run several dollars, or more, when pay per click advertising or banner advertising are used. For even moderately competitive terms the cost can range from a few cents to several tens of dollars per visitor. Given those costs, it often makes sense for site owners to optimize their sites for organic search.
Not all sites have identical goals in mind when they optimize for search engines. Some sites are seeking any and all traffic, and may be optimized to rank highly for common search phrase. This can be a poor marketing strategy for a business because it can generate a large volume of low-quality inquiries that cost money to handle, yet result in little business.
Other sites target a specific population, with particular needs or interests. Many businesses try to optimize their sites for large numbers of highly specific keywords that indicate a prospective customer who is ready to buy their product. Focusing on desired traffic can generate more high-quality sales leads, and fewer time-wasting inquiries.
Pay Per Click
Pay per click, or PPC, is an advertising technique used on websites, advertising networks, and search engines.
With search engines, pay per click advertisements are usually text ads placed near search results; when a site visitor clicks on the advertisement, the advertiser is charged a small amount. Variants include pay for placement and pay for ranking. Pay per click is also sometimes known as Cost Per Click (CPC).
While many companies exist in this space, Google and Yahoo! Search Marketing are the largest network operators as of 2006. Depending on the search engine, minimum prices per click start at US$0.01 (up to US$0.50). Very popular search terms can cost much more on popular engines.
The most common type of pay per click advertising is “Keyword PPC.” Advertisers using this method bid on "keywords," which can be words or phrases, and can include product model numbers. When a user searches for a particular word or phrase, the list of advertiser links appears in order of bidding.
Which Method Is Right For Me?
Though organic SEO is a better long term investment, it can take a long time (sometimes months) to generate results. Therefore, many people choose PPC advertising at first because it is a way to instantaneously obtain search engine ranking; as soon as a PPC campaign has been activated, its text ads appear among the “sponsored link” results in an order that reflects the keyword bidding.
Even though more searchers choose natural search engine results (about 70% versus approximately 30% for sponsored results), the best way to ensure you reach the largest possible audience is to employ both natural SEO and PPC advertising. Many of the most successful advertising campaigns on the web maximize their advertising dollar by utilizing both.
