Search Engine Optimization is the process of affecting the online visibility of your website in a search engine’s (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) natural, un-paid or organic results. The higher ranked and the more frequently your site is listed in search results, the more visitors your website will likely receive from search engine users.

There are a number of factors that effect a website’s visibility and likability by search engines. It takes a long-term commitment by businesses to improve and maintain their rank and placement in search results.

A good SEO strategy can become more important than your best salesman. Search engine users trust their search engines to provide the most appropriate, reputable and popular results.

If your business manages to place within the top results for certain search phrases, you could see an increase in website visitors. Providing your business’ website is captivating and answers the needs of the visitor, you could see an increase in sales from your SEO efforts.

How does it all work?

A simple explanation is that search engines ‘crawl’ the Internet to build their search databases. Within a certain time frame, they will cover the entire Internet and start over again. Each search engine uses a unique equation to measure websites. To optimise your website, you should concentrate on optimizing each individual component that search engines use in their equation. For example, Google recently added a measurement of a website’s social media use to their equation. Working on expanding your website’s social media reach now has an additional benefit.

What can I do to improve my SEO?

There are a number of things you can do to improve your business’ search engine ranking. Take a look at our ‘How to make it into the top 10!’ article.