Search Engine Optimization

What is Search Engine Optimization, what is it used for, and what are the benefits of Search Engine Optimization?

Let me start by asking you a question. How do you make yourself look better to others? Lets say you are preparing to go on a date. Are you going to do your hair or wear crummy clothes? Are you wearing something shiny or something that would draw attention to a certain part of your body? How are you going to smell, will it be like you just got back from the gym, or are you going to take the time to clean yourself up so that you can make a positive impression on the person you are going on the date with? Most likely your goal would be to impress the person you are going on the date with.

Enter Search Engine Optimization, a technique of optimizing a website to make it rank better in search engines. By optimizing your website it will increase the visibility of your website and will help bring a lot more traffic towards your webpage. A study showed that 93% of all online experiences begin with a search engine, 75% never navigate past the first page of results. If your company has a webpage or you have a personal page that you want everyone to see, you cannot afford to have your webpage on the third page of the search results. When you perform a search on lets say Google, the order the results are displayed are based on algorithms. These algorithms take a number of factors into account to decide which web site should be shown in the top spot, second spot, etc. By optimizing your website for search engines you will be given an advantage over non-optimized sites and will increase your chances of getting higher on the list; Therefore, increasing the traffic your website gets.

Here are a few benefits of Search Engine Optimization:

1 - High Return on investment

2 - Long term positioning, if done correctly a properly designed website will maintain a position in the top rankings for a longer period of time.

3 - Targeted traffic, by optimizing it will increase the number of visitors who are actively searching for products or services that your website has to offer.

4 - Increased Brand Visibility

5 - Higher sales

6 - Cost effective

7 - Usability

Now if you have a website that you want to optimize know that it wont be an overnight success, as I often say, "Everything is not lollipops and rainbows." It takes time and money in order to optimize your website, as well, the internet is ever changing so it will be a continual battle if you want to reach the upper echelons of the search engine world. Here is a rough timeline from Forbes on about how long it takes for an optimization to work, and the results you might expect.

Month 1 – Research and discovery, website audit, keyword strategy, and planning. If research and discovery can be done quickly, then technical changes may start being made to the website within the first month. In other cases a thorough research and discovery phase can last more than one month.

Month 2 – Begin technical SEO work, that is, making modification to the website based on site audit results. In some cases the website needs to be overhauled, and this of itself can take months. Other SEO activities such as working on the link profile and building content can be done at the same time the overhaul is happening. If you find yourself in this overhaul situation, you’ll be doing “SEO” but you still won’t be seeing any results at all, since the changes being made will only start to have an impact once they’re finished.

Month 3 – Start focusing on content creation. Blogging, FAQs, whitepapers, articles, expanded product and company information, etc. Ideally you would have started on this right after the strategy and planning, but often budgets restrict what can be done at once, and so a technical overhaul needs to come first. This being the case, you might start seeing some improvements in rankings by the end of this month. If those rankings are translating into leads or sales then even better, but you wouldn’t necessarily expect them yet.

Month 4 – Continued content creation, technical optimization of the website, and development of a healthy link profile (which may include cleaning up low quality links). By this month you could expect to see a marked increase in rankings, traffic, and lead generation. It won’t be anywhere close to the improvements you should 12 months into your SEO efforts, but it should be significant enough that you know SEO is working.

Month 5 – By this month or perhaps earlier in the process you may have started incorporating social media management into your plan to amplify your content and increase direct traffic to your website. This can lead to a healthy, natural link profile, and of course generate leads in and of itself. You would continue with content creation and perhaps engage in some PR or media outreach. You should be seeing more and more traffic coming in from SEO at this point, and your leads should be growing as a result.

Month 6 – If your traffic has reached 5,000 visitors per month or more by this point, you could benefit from adding conversion rate optimization to your efforts to improve how the traffic you’re receiving converts into leads and/or sales. From this point on, your activities may be consistently focused on content creation and promoting that content, or you may be doing things that are more creative. The specific activities can vary greatly depending on what type of company you are and what kind of website you have.

Many Search Engine Optimization firms will tell you that it takes 4 to 6 months to start seeing results. That’s generally accurate, but bear in mind this is when you start seeing results, and SEO results grow over time. Whatever results you’re getting at 6 months should be considerably less than what you’re getting at 12 months. At some point, you may see your results taper off, and then it may be a matter of maintaining results rather than growing them.

What are your thoughts on Search Engine Optimization? If you had a website would you optimize it? Do you already have a website that is already optimized, how did you optimize it, please share your story!

http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

http://www.businessinsider.com/10-basic-seo-tips-everyone-should-know-2010-1

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/importance-search-engine-optimization-sid-gandotra