SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimisation. Search engine optimisation is the process of ‘optimising’ the text on your website so that it contains selected keywords and phrases relevant to your industry or business. The idea is that search engines will rank your website more highly when potential customers search these keywords and phrases resulting in more traffic to your website and potentially more leads and sales. Still awake? Great. So...
Keyword Density
In addition to keyword density, context and linking themes, (read it slowly and it won’t hurt so much) search engines look at several other indicators to work out the most relevant website under any given search. Google only likes you if you are popular with other websites similar to yours (linking pages with similar content) while Yahoo will trade you in for a new model if your content gets old and you never update it. The good news is that you can pretty much ignore these petty algorithms because the law of the web states pages with lots of relevant textual content rank consistently higher than those with limited textual content. The trick is to get all that tasty content onto your website.
Now if you are a computer nerd with an appetite for doing thing the hard way, go buy Adobe Dreamweaver and we will see you (and your glowing new site) in six months or so. If, like me and inherently time poor (and a little lazy), you are probably going to want to know what a CMS is.
Website Content Management Systems
A website Content Management System or CMS for short, is a special browser driven interface that runs behind your website and lets you add, edit and change content more quickly and easily than third party softwares like Adobe Dreamweaver, Golive or the Microcroft product Dodgy Page. Even with a CMS, you will need someone to design you a good shell and set-up the initial site programming but beyond that, basically you just type, hit save and you have a new web page. Share you knowledge in articles, post press releases, online and recreate your print media ads online all as easy as sending an email. With a CMS, no programing is required so if you are short on time or inspiration, you can delegate the task of writing your website copy to just about anyone. Of course you may want to make money from your website so a Search Engine Optimisation expert is recommended at least for your initial setup.
Whether you update your site and optimise each page yourself or pay a professional to work their magic on your website, the return on investment behind SEO can be great. A more optimised website should land more potential customers onto your website which in turn should allow you to generate more online leads and more sales. Now if you are thinking there must be an easier way, you are right. If optimisation seems all to hard, you can simply pay to generate new online leads via advertising in the ‘sponsored links’ section of any search engine result - how easy is that!
Pay Per Click Advertising
The advantage of pay per click advertising (PPC - the model on which search engines offer their advertising) is that PPC is instant, measurable and if you think about it, pretty amazing value. Your PPC ad is shown only to people searching keywords related to your business or industry AND you only pay ONLY if they click on your ad (hence pay per click).
The only downside for PPC advertising is while it is guaranteed the easiest way to get the world looking at your website, you still need to convert these visitors into leads and sales which can be a real challenge unless you can easily measure and change your website copy. Enter CMS.
The great thing about a CMS is that it will allow you to easily track the visitors journey on your website so you can maximise the effectiveness of page copy not just for search engines but also for conversion of visitors to online leads or actual sales. Even a simple CMS should have reporting that lets you know how many people have visited a particular page. With this information, you know what pages are generating leads and can use the CMS to change those that are not.
Converting Visitors into Customers
This need to convert visitors to actual leads and sales is why you should optimise every page on your website regardless of whether you are paying for search engine advertising or hoping to show up on the first page of Google by way of the free listings. An added bonus is that the more that you have to pay to generate leads on any given search, the more money you can save by having your website optimised. For example, You may pay Google $2 to have your ad show up in a loosely associated keyword search. Optimise the page your ad points to and this cost could drop to as little as 10 cents!
Of course if you are really clever, the best approach of all is to optimise your site to show up both in the free ‘organic listings’ and to pay the absolute minimum to be displayed at the same time in the sponsored links - two bites of the cherry offers two opportunities to win a new customer. Now that is smart marketing.
The Interactive Bit
So that is SEO in a nutshell. For those of you who are interactive, you might like to search ‘Ford Dealership’ in Google.com.au and see what comes up.
If you liked this article, subscribe to our newsletter to get ‘Your Online Advantage’ delivered to your inbox once a month.
