What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process whereby a website is optimised so that will peform better in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). A website that has good SEO techniques applied to it should appear higher than competitors in the same target market for high traffic keyword phrases that bring in site visitors and hence potential customers to a website. The three major search engines are Google, Yahoo! and Bing, with Google being the most important of the three when it comes to bringing traffic to a website due to its popularity. There are various techniques involved in performing SEO to a website and can be done once-off, or preferrably on an ongoing basis to ensure a website continues to rank highly in search engines.

How does Search Engine Optimisation work?

Quite simply having a website these days is just not enough. The online marketplace is expanding rapidly and many businesses have permanently employed staff to just do SEO on their business website(s). This means they are more likely to appear ahead of your own website in search engine results pages. The higher up on the page your website appears, the more likely it is to get traffic. Appearing on Page 1 of Google Search Results for keyword phrases related to your business will mean you get visitors daily, many of which will be interested in doing business online.

It is often not possible to compete with big name brands that may exist in your target market, with higher budgets, more staff and better brand awareness generally they are almost guaranteed to appear before your own website for related search terms. Search Engine Optimisation allows smaller businesses to capture a percentage of this search traffic by examining the broader opportunities that may exist in your target market. With many keyword variations drawing high volumes of traffic, even a small percentage can mean considerable improvement in your profit margins. The heatmap below illustrates the importance of appearing higher in search results, with the red area being the part of the webpage that receives the highest volume of clicks.

Search engines don't think like people and whilst you would consider the phrase "florist cape town" the same as "florist in cape town" a search engine will consider these two phrases unique and may generate different results pages for each search term. Search Engine Optimisation involves identifying opportunities that exist in your target market for keyword phrases that apply to your business and optimises your website accordingly. The addition of keyword rich content related to these keywords can help to improve the possibility your website will appear in search results.

Other factors that apply in SEO include metatag analysis to ensure that the Title, Keywords and Description of your website are correct and applicable. Metatags are small snippets of text that form part of the HTML code of a webpage and help to describe and identify it. Link building is another important part of SEO and is the process whereby links to your website are established across the internet. Having good links built to quality sites will also help the ranking of your website in search engine results pages.

The benefit of having good SEO techniques applied to your website is that unlike traditional forms of promotion, such as advertising, there is no prerequisite for continual expenditure. Theoretically if a website has sound search engine optimisation applied to it, it should continue to regularly appear in search engine results pages, though this does not take into account your competitors activities and once again regular and continual SEO will further help to improve these rankings.

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Interested? We'll do our best to help you get the most out of your new website, internet marketing campaign or any other ideas you may have! Just fill out the form below, email us at talk2us@gethits.co.za or you can call (+27) 0860 103 674 or 021 671 2170 during office hours.


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