The Internet has changed the way we market all businesses, whether online or offline. Many traditional offline businesses now undertake a substantial level of the business directly online but also use the Internet to drive visitors to their offline outlets as well – many electrical appliance retailers are a great example of this.
So it now follows that instead of just marketing to people, we now have to also draw the attention of the search engines to drive traffic to increase our online exposure, that’s where SEO or search engine optimization comes in.
Online marketers have developed a number of strategies that bring visitors to websites. These techniques, best known as SEO make your overall marketing activities achieve better results. But before we get into the detail, let me illustrate something …….
Don’t Overlook the Obvious as My Son Did
Its all about relevancy, let me give you an example my son who’s 14 is just about to decide on his ‘options’. That means he’s deciding now on the subjects he’ll sit exams for in his last term at high school in 2 years time.
Now he absolutely loves animals especially dogs which is really weird as up until he was three he’d hide behind something or someone if a dog even came towards him and if it barked he’d run a mile. Anyway at some point all things changed and now he’s mad about dogs. So he’s decided he would like to be a vet. That means years at Uni, loads of studying and tons of cost for his mum and dad (yes us unfortunately!).
OK so we sat down to talk through his ‘option’ choices and suddenly he’s talking about media studies and drama (both subjects he enjoys).Hang on I say how are those subjects relevant to becoming a vet ? Well suddenly you could literally see him wake up (he is a teenager after all!) to the point I was making.
So we then go back, check those subjects that are a ‘must’ to even get a look in to doing a veterinary degree and of course subjects like triple science are there, a foreign language is good etc etc – my point being its all about relevancy – just like SEO, its about targeting the relevant visitor. After all you wouldn’t take a course in bricklaying if you want to be a brain surgeon, would you?. So needless to say his ‘Option’ choices changed a bit.
What is SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) works on one basic principle – targeting specific keywords related to your product or service you are offering on your site. These keywords ideally need to be those that interested parties, i.e. your potential visitors are using to search for results in the search engines.
So to re-enforce this – These are keywords that are relevant to your business, and are also being searched for by web surfers. The idea is that when they enter these keywords into Google or another major search engine, your site comes up – hope this is clear because its essential understanding to all SEO activity. If you’re keyword research is off then much of your other marketing activity, like article marketing will under perform as well, so do it right from the off.
Free Keyword Tool
Choosing these keywords can be daunting for many people at first, but Google’s Free keywords Tool is a simple to use and is the best place to start. You simply enter keywords relevant to your business and it gives a whole list of suggestions for related terms. It also tells you how many searches they’re getting, and what their trend over time looks like. Google’s Free Adwords Tool is easy for anyone to use, just go there and try it
Top Tip – some of the headline keywords are obviously very competitive getting huge amounts of traffic. To get ranked well for them will be hard, a lot of work and /or expensive – so drill down the list to related terms that are not so competitive, you’ll stand are far better chance to rank well for them.
Now tomorrow I’ll be covering getting back links, why you need them and should you do link swops plus should you be using social media as well, so until tomorrow
Get the answers you need? – Leave a comment
Tony
