What is SEO
SEO is an abbreviated term for search engine optimisation and website analysis that basically encompasses various methodologies for helping website page content achieve higher ranking positions within a search engine listing for certain key search phrases. Relative to ‘pre-optimised’ web page content, optimised web content by a good SEO specialist adding carefully crafted additions should always gain an advantage over a period of time compared with the ‘uneducated’ competitor sites.
Search Engine Optimisation
You need a search engine optimisation consultant specialist when … In lay-mans terms if you want your web pages to be seen and accessed by millions of surfers (web hits). You don’t belong to ‘Take That’ or play football for Liverpool FC, Manchester United FC, Inter Milan or maybe something similar; you need that little extra to get your web pages found by the searching masses. Suppose your website appears on page fifteen in the search listings, especially local listings. In that case, you can forget about having millions of visitors unless you have recently made the news headlines for some famous or infamous reason.
Search Position placement
It would be lovely and very simple if good search engine position placement could be achieved by having lots of nice keywords in the metatag area of your pages and having great internal content on your web pages. Unfortunately, a ‘reality check’ often proves this not to be the case. Many of the readers of this page will be aware of website pages, maybe their own, that have great internal content, low-cost goods at competitive prices and services with great benefits to the consumer. Unfortunately, the resulting profitability of the site is so low that the cost of the hosting of the website itself is barely covered. Maybe this is because the website logs show the page visits by possible consumers are far too low for the site to ever become a financial success. How can a great low-cost bargain product retailer be found on the internet?
Page Authority
Realistically, to achieve a good Page Rank or page authority and top search engine ranking successes across the board for your pages, an ongoing effort is required. This is because the rules are frequently changed by holders of the search engine algorithms, the search engine owners themselves. A good title for one of your pages, one month with ten words, can be one word over the limit the next month when the rules change for a particular search engine. When toting up the ranking points for those particular phrases, you can then find you drop a dozen or so places in the rankings, and you may find your page rank (PR) or authority falling over time.
Analytical Analysis
Many profitable internet-aware companies, those who make vast amounts of money via internet sales, actually employ people full-time or retain an SEO services company just to perform analysis and analytics on their website pages and constantly compare ranking with competitor sites. They constantly tweak their already optimised pages and maintain good linkages to maximise the profitability of their website on an ongoing basis. While this helps, the reality today is that the other 99.9% of website owners, who are getting poor listing results for their unoptimised website content, cannot immediately employ somebody full-time to perform analytics and analyse their site on a day-to-day basis permanently. Although this would increase their success, due to lack of funding and the size of their business, this is an unrealistic proposition for most. There are many free tools for SEO analysis to do a complete SEO audit of your website. Get registered now.
SEA
The good news is all is not lost. While not every website owner can get to number one in the Google listings for every wished search term, proper website analysis and analytics can help you go a long way towards achieving a good, or maybe a great position, at a reasonable cost if done correctly. Much of the search engine ranking success is dependent not on what is within the content but relative to who likes and links to the optimised content. But it’s a classic chicken and egg scenario. You want people to visit your site to increase its popularity. But to be found, you need recommendations and cannot get recommendations because you cannot be found. What you may have to do is kickstart the process preceeded by quality analysis and analytics.
Search Engine Ranking
The competition can sometimes be so great in a particular fast-selling online industry that the best you could hope ever for is a high page one ranking in short to medium term and a good to medium search engine ranking in the long term without the continued intervention and tweaking. This is true for a lot of your preferred search terms. Within a hypothetical fast online selling industry, that alone could guarantee you a certain amount of success. Of course, this can also lead to value via word of mouth. This assumes that what you have on offer within your site meets your potential online customer requirements. There lies the rub.
Management with Measurement
It is also important to keep the bounce rate low by giving visitors the opportunity to find what they want right away. If the visitor to your site searched for an item and was referred via a link from, say, Google if they arrived on the home page and the search for an item is not obviously available … bye-bye. They go elsewhere hence the term ‘bounce rate’ by measuring what and where people go on your site, you can also find areas that need improvement. You can only manage what you can measure.
Organic or Google Ads
Discounting ‘white hat’ and ‘black hat SEO practices for the moment, there are two ways you can achieve consistently high search engine rankings. You can pay for targeted advertisements (sponsored results – for example, Google AdWords) to ensure you achieve a good listing, or you can attempt to achieve a good high ranking in the organic search engine listing alone. Neither can be achieved economically without expert knowledge and an ongoing organised persistence for a long time.
Search Engine Listings
What is an organic search engine local listing i.e Google My Business, you may ask? An organic listing appears in the none paid area of a search engine and results in a web page relevant to a searched-for term.
Organically Free Listings
While organic listings are free and free is good, unless the website owner has some obscure content with similarly obscure keywords and descriptions, good organic listings are rarely free. Believe me, somewhere along the line, indirect payments will have been made to help achieve organic listing success. Whether that payment is to an SEO expert like myself or to other avenues that may even be dangerous in the long term if done by a less scrupulous SEO hacker, a payment, more often than not, is made.
CPC or organic
So what is the best (maybe cheapest?) method for success, organic listings or paid-for advertisements, people sometimes ask? That’s where the SEO analysis, good analytical measurement within the business and experience comes in. Different types of businesses require different solutions. Paid-for and carefully crafted targeted advertisements can often be a good short-term solution and can be recommended over the long term in a few scenarios. But unless you are SEO savvy and can also edit and understand website coding and services, the only way you can maximise your profitability is to consult a good honest SEO expert who can access and analyse your online requirements. If so allowed, he or she can put in place the methodology to help maximise your outlay-to-success ratio in terms of cost and profitability for your online business. Return on investment ( ROI ) is the key factor you should be concerned about.
High Website Traffic
So maybe you are an online retailer with a fancy website earning you little money, and your prices are the most competitive in the business. Without achieving a high ranking in search engines for keywords that will drive business to your site, you are effectively losing a lot of potential money. The more your site is visited by potential customers, the greater your chance of making a sale. and, of course, a profit. High volumes of website visits can really make you money.
SEO – Seek Proper Advice
Alternatively, if you already pay for click-based advertising and the number of clicks to your site costs more than your overall profit on the items you sell, maybe you should be seeking better and proper advice.
Ongoing Website Analytics
Fact: A good SEO expert will make an initial improvement to your site but will need to periodically add and change things over time to achieve optimum success for a customer. This means some sort of retainer contract is required, certainly during the website analytics process.
Fact: Co-operation between the SEO expert and the customer is very important. Both parties must be prepared to listen to each other’s views and preferences.
