What is SEO and how does it help my business?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. If you do have a web site created specifically for your business, you must take Search Engine Optimization seriously.

“Why SEO?”

…one might ask. “My web site is already up and available to anyone with internet access” – is surely the first thought that comes to a business owner that has just published a web site. But unless your web designer took care of that aspect, you will soon find out that the internet pool is so saturated with similar content that your web site hardly makes it to the top 100 search results, if not at all.

Here is where SEO can make the whole difference. A web site that has been optimized for search engines is a site that will definitely have a much better chance at making it to the top search results. The closer to the top you are, the more visible your business is.

“Location, location, location”

Location used to be considered one of the most powerful aspects of a business. It still is. The internet is a digital cloud of information, but to assume that one will have easy access to every droplet of information is an overstatement. Search engines are today the main channel through which we use to find what we are looking for in this incredible vessel of information the internet has become. To be easily found is not an easy feat, but regardless of the nature of your business, once your website is found you can hit the jackpot big time – if you have a good strategy to take advantage of the opportunity.

But let’s focus on the easy part… The ideal situation would be to be featured as the very first search result at a prominent search engine, like Google. There are two kinds of search results in search engines: organic and paid. Even though search engines make a big effort to highlight paid search results (as they are their main source of income), people tend to click on organic search results. Organic results consist of non-paid results, which are those pages which have already been indexed by the search engine. Every search engine has its own method to index and sort the pages it has indexed. To be listed in the first page of a search result, a web page must be highly optimized for search engines. Breaking that “code”, often referred to as “Google Algorithm” in the case of Google, has become an industry in itself. Needless to say, Google protects this secret so well that it still manages to mystify everyone dedicated to breaking the code – from the average web designer to top paid reverse engineers.

Applying SEO

Suppose you have a tailoring business, specialized in exclusive, elegant, to-the-detail customized service. You have a very specific target group, a group that can afford luxury and uses a very sophisticated vocabulary. You can turn this unusual vocabulary to your advantage by creating content on your business website that uses that vocabulary smartly. Sprinkle the text with important keywords that are widely used, taking care that these keywords are evenly spread. Your text will be ideally keyword rich, but not too “dense”. The text should also be pleasant to read, otherwise your customers will start to skip your text or get bored with double statements that don’t add any quality to your product. Remember: you’re still trying to sell your product – be it a dress or an idea – so your text must be readable in spite of the optimization.

If your web site is an online store with temporary stock, your site may suffer of lack of content. You can compensate that by writing articles which are relevant to your business – original and helpful – so you add not only content but also value to your web site. A well-written article can earn you some links from other web pages, which is one of the most important aspects of SEO. Pages which are referred to by different web sites (which in turn are also rich in content relevant to your business, like product-reviews and shopping-tips sites) are seen by search engines as valuable and relevant. Valuable pages are therefore granted a higher page rank, which also help them close-up to the #1 search result quest.

Moving further on, let’s also suppose that the nature of your services as a tailor are so customer-centered that pre-fabricated suits are simply out of the equation. That would probably mean that you require your customers to come to the store and take measurements. Let’s also suppose that you’d rather concentrate your marketing locally. Back to the keywords in your text, make sure that you repeat the name of the area you’d like to cover a few times, like “Los Angeles, California” – or just “Los Angeles”.

There are many other things you can do to improve your SEO, and many aspects to be considered as well. To name a few:

• SEO is mostly based on the overall weight of particular keywords in the content. For instance, to increase the weight of the keyword “tailor in Los Angeles”, include it in the title tag, in the H1 tag, in the meta description tag, as a meta keyword tag and a few times in the content of your page. If you do that extensively through many of your pages/articles – taking care not to overdo it – you will eventually start to rise in organic search results for the keyword “tailor in Los Angeles”.
• The title tag is perhaps the most weighty aspect of a page. Define your title after you have created the content for your page, so that it reflects the content.
• Many argue if the meta description of a page is still as relevant as it used to be. The truth is, nobody really knows. So making sure you have a relevant meta description is only positive. As with the title tag, make sure that this description is based on the already existing content of your page. Sprinkle relevant keywords into it, but make sure these keywords are in the content of the page as well. Try to keep it to 160 characters, including spaces.
• Meta keywords also inspire discussions about their impact on SEO. But they are still accounted for in all major keyword density tools online. In other words, use it rather than not… Keywords should also be present in the page’s existing content. If you’d like to use a keyword that is not in your content, make sure you include it in your content before using it as a meta keyword. Meta keywords are separated by comma and can contain more than a single word. Keep the number of keywords low, preferably below ten.
• Use headings smartly, always and only as headings!
• Only one “H1″ tag per page, which will reflect the “motto” of that page. Many choose to use the same text from the title tag, which is not a bad idea. It will only reinforce the weight of the keywords used.
• A couple of “H2″ tags per page, which will emphasize the important sections. Careful not to overdo it!
• A few of the other tags (H3, H4, H5) spread around the content, always used to emphasize important subsections.
• Content is king, content is text, text must be relevant!
• The more relevant content you have, the more chances you will have to appear in top search results.
• Every page is a page. Most traffic on the internet is generated by landing pages (articles, documents, etc.), and these pages are almost never the home page. A single page that is highly ranked can draw more than 50% of the total amount of traffic.
• The more often your site is updated with new content, the more love you will get from search engines. Stop updating your site and you will be risking to be left out. Assuming that your pages are not linked to by many other websites (backlinked), Google will prioritise web sites that update their content more often and even your amazingly optimized article that used to be on the top search results for a particular keyword will start to drop positions.

There are of course endless courses of action to take, for those who want to dive into SEO. If you are interested in applying SEO to your existing web site but can’t bother to go through all the knots and bolts involved, please don’t hesitate in contacting me. It will be a pleasure to help your business find its place in the main street!

A note on Black Hat SEO

Just a short note on Black Hat SEO, since it’s a widely used term. “Black Hat SEO” stands for everything that is “not-quite-lawful”, “not-quite-advisable”, “obscure” SEO. It’s like kicking someone between the legs in boxing, while knowing you should be using your hands only. If no one was looking, you might have even gotten a K.O., but you should know better… It used to be tempting to cheat the mystic “Google Algorithm” with obscure techniques, but Google is not stupid and have no problems to pay the best engineers in the world to protect their interests. Google, as every other search engine out there is not fond of Black Hat SEO. Black Hat SEO will only damage your business, don’t do it.

Good luck with your SEO quest, and as mentioned, let me know if I can help you with it.
Wallace