Search Engine Optimization refers to the practice of making your website more visible to search engines and in turn making them more visible to your potential customers across the web.
Organic Search vs. Paid Search
Search engine results can come in two forms paid search results and organic search results. In most cases paid results usually go to the highest bidder.
Paid Search is often used in conjunction with an
organic search campaign and requires a different approach that focuses closely on PPC bids and effectiveness of add dollars.
Organic Search results on the other hand are usually ranked using a complex algorithm. Although there is much contention about what is contained in the Search Engine algorithms there is some steadfast practices that have been proven to increase your
Search Engine rankings.
Relevant Content
The major Search Engines use spider programs that crawl the web and index websites and the content they contain. Search Engines such as Google, Microsoft Bing, and Yahoo do this in an attempt to match user searches with sites relevant to those searches. In theory the more relevant your site to a users search the higher your site should rank. The sites relevance can be determined by matching search terms or “keywords” with those same keywords mentioned in your site and how many times those keywords are used in your website content.
Social Media and Online Reputation
Content relevance is important but it is not the only factor that plays into organic search engine rankings. Search Engines also attempt to gauge how reputable and popular a website is on the web using a slew of variables such as directory submissions, back links, PageRank, social media mentions, and daily website traffic just to name a few. A good Search Engine Marketing campaign will utilize some of the popular directories Social Media companies to expand their Internet footprint.
Search Engine Compliance
In addition to the other factors that Search Engines look for they also like your website to adhere to certain standards that make your website easier to index and also enhance readability for the user. A properly optimized website uses an html structure and page hierarchy that makes it easy for the search engine crawler to read the website. It is extremely important that you follow these rules or else your site might not be indexed properly or even worse could be penalized by the Search Engines and negatively effect your organic search rankings.
It is very important that your Search Engine Marketing campaign is multi faceted and uses all the optimization techniques available and within your budget. Search Engine Optimization is not something that happens over night but patience and persistence pay off for businesses that develop a solid search engine marketing campaign accompanied with good online practices.
