What is SEO?

“SEO” stands for “search engine optimization.” In essence, SEO is the practice of helping your website not only to appear on search engines such as Google and Yahoo!, but also to ensure that your website ranks near the top of those search engine results.

Typical search engine optimization practices include:

Keyword optimization: Keyword optimization means that you aim to rank highly in search engine results for specific search terms related to your website. Once you have researched keywords and decided which keywords your site should focus on, you can begin the process of optimizing your site for these phrases.

Adding a blog to your site: Many companies use blogs as an important component of SEO. Blogs provide fresh content, which search engines like, and they also offer an opportunity to add lots of pages filled with your keywords. Additionally, blogs provide a way for other websites to link to your site.

Link building: Getting other websites to link to your site is known as “link building.” Inbound links are critically important to your search engine rankings; a link from a qualified source is counted by Google as a “vote” for your website. The more qualified votes you have, the higher your website will rank in the search engine results.

Expanding and unifying your web presence: These days, just having a well-developed website isn't enough to put your site above your competition's. Your business needs a wider presence on the Internet, including social media accounts, online video, and other methods to reach out to potential customers, build links, and “own” a greater segment of the search engine results page.

Does Your Website Need SEO?

The vast majority of web traffic is driven by search engines. In particular, the main search engine your business needs to be thinking about is Google. Google controls roughly 80% of the search engine market share; Yahoo! is a distant second with about 10%; Bing controls close to 8%; and all the other search engines fight over the remaining scraps.

If you're in a particularly competitive field, such as law, medicine, dentistry, etc., there's a good chance that without SEO help your website will not gain a high search engine ranking.

Why does a high ranking matter? Here are a few facts to consider:

• The top three results get almost 60% of all the clicks
• The #1 spot gets 36.4% of clicks; the #2 spot gets 12.5%
• Sites at the bottom of the first page of Google results get less than 1.5% of all clicks.

In other words, if you aren't ranking near the top in the Google search engine results, there's a very good chance that your company is losing out on sales or, at the very least, leads.

Avoiding the Hazards of SEO

What you don't want your SEO efforts to do is to “over-optimize” your site. An “over-optimized” site ranks highly in Google, but is easier to read for a search engine than it is for an actual human being. A site that has fallen victim to over-optimization gets a great deal of traffic, but very few of these website visitors become leads.

If this is happening to your website, it indicates that your site hasn't been built with human beings in mind. The right SEO expert or web development company will help your website rank highly for the right keywords, yet they will also ensure that your website is easy to navigate, contains valuable and compelling information, and funnels website visitors towards taking an action such as contacting your business or buying your products.

Contact us today to find out how we can give your website an SEO makeover so that you can build your business.

For a free consultation, call us at 888-825-0410 or contact us online.