These days, people are relying more and more on the Internet for many of their…
Companies who wish to attract more business need to have a strong Internet presence. But the Internet is a very competitive place to be, which is why it’s advisable for a serious business owner to have an SEO specialist to manage their online image.
On the Internet, both big corporations and small establishments are on virtually equal footing. The difference relies highly on how visible one is to potential clients and customers. And high visibility often equates to being among the top five in the results when someone makes a search online.
This is where SEO comes in.
SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of making your website more visible to users when they make an online search. For instance, if you type a phrase or question in Google, the search engine comes up with millions of results which most likely answers your query. The results that appear on top of the list – or on the first page, at least – are the most likely to get clicked, meaning more traffic and more potential business.
So how do search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo! come up with the results? They utilize a tool called a crawler or spider. The spiders crawl the Web and gather data from websites which are used to produce relevant results during a search. Through SEO – which includes the use of frequently-searched keywords, providing informative and regularly-updated content, cross-linking between the pages within your website, and other techniques – you can increase the prominence of your business on the Web.
Photo courtesy of toprankblog.com
In order to provide relevant content and place the right keywords in your website, you need to understand your target audience as well as their search habits, the likely questions that they would want answered, the words or phrases that they would probably type when they do a search, and so on.
It also helps if your site is linked to other sites, since the incoming and outgoing links lets search engines determine the trustworthiness of your website, and this is reflected in your PageRank. Theoretically, the more websites link to yours, the more important your website is assumed to be (although manipulating this through “link farming” is a big no-no). Being linked to by a respectable site will often help improve your ranking. You can also use your company’s social media accounts to link to the pages on your site.
But to research the right keywords and phrases, place these in the pages and metatags in your website (although metatags are typically ignored these days), answer your prospective clients’ probable questions, regularly update the content – these take a lot of time and effort, which is why, if you wish your business to become prominent in the Web, you may want to consider having a professional SEO consultant to help you out.
