Search engine optimisation (SEO or Search Engine Optimization) is the practise of optimising a website in order to achieve higher rankings on the search engines. It is something that all internet marketing consultants should understand. Search engine optimisation is also known as ‘organic SEO’ or just ‘SEO’. The main attraction of search engine optimisation is that it is a free way of getting lots of traffic to your website. Although the traffic is free, getting there can cost money as many people pay people search engine consultants to optimise their website and work on increasing their rankings.
For the purposes of search engine optimisation you only need to concern yourself with the 3 largest search engines.
1. Google.
2. Yahoo
3. Bing (formerly MSN).
Google is the most popular search engine, so I would suggest optimising your website to achieve high rankings in Google.
Search engines work very simply. When a visitor types a keyword into the search box, the search engines product a list of results (also known as SERP’s, search engine results page) that they feel are most relevant to the visitor. The word to note is relevance; the goal of any successful search engine optimisation campaign is to make your website seem as relevant as possible for a particular keyword that you are trying to rank for. The more relevant the search engines think you are the higher you will rank. The higher you rank the more visitors you get and the more money you make (hopefully!).
Ideally you want to be optimised for 100’s or 1000’s of different keywords. Of course big generic keywords such as ‘weight loss’ of ‘real estate’ will drive a lot of visitors to your website but the traffic will not be as targeted. Furthermore getting to the top of the search engines for these types of keywords can take a lot of time and effort (think years). A much better approach is to try and get ranked for longer tail keywords (these are keywords that are about 3 -5 words long such as ‘cheap flats to rent in Manchester’ or ‘weight loss after having a baby’). The traffic will be much more targeted and you will be able to rank much quicker. I will go into detail about this in another lesson.
As mentioned search engine optimisation is extremely attractive because it is essentially free advertising. If you can manage to get optimised for the right keywords, then you can potentially drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website. So now you know what search engine optimisation, let’s look at the basics of SEO.
The basics of search engine optimisation
Despite what the ‘gurus’ would have you believe search engine optimisation is actually very simple. Anybody can learn how to do SEO and optimise website. There are only 2 words that you need to know, ‘Onpage SEO’ and ‘Offpage SEO’. That’s it! Nothing else.
Search Engine Optimisation = ‘Onpage SEO’ and ‘Offpage’ SEO
Onpage SEO, is the practise of optimising actual web pages to make them more SEO friendly. Offpage SEO, is the practise of building backlinks to your website. When you combine a precise Onpage and Offpage SEO strategy then you will be able to get up the rankings. If you have no idea what Onpage and Offpage factors are, then don’t worry because I am starting a series of lessons that will go through all of this in great detail. For now just understand that whatever anybody else tells you, there are only 2 types of SEO and they are really very simple to learn.
One of the biggest problems that I have noticed in the internet marketing world is that many ‘SEO experts’ like to make out that SEO is something incredibly complex (usually so they can justify their ridiculous fees).
SEO = Easy but TIME-CONSUMING
In actual fact it’s, really very simple. However it can be time consuming, so in many cases it can be worthwhile paying a search engine optimisation consultant to optimise your website. However you don’t want to be paying the exorbitant fees these experts charge.
There are some fantastic SEO services that will do the job very reasonably and effectively. I’ll talk more about those in another post.
To summarise, search engine optimisation is optimising your website (s) to achieve higher rankings in the search engines for specific keywords. You want to rank highly in the search engines because, it is free to do so and can attract a lot of targeted traffic to your website. You want traffic to your website because without it, you will never make any money!
Search engine optimisation is actually very simple, you don’t a degree in computer science and you can learn it very quickly. The only 2 things you need to know is that there is only ‘Onpage SEO’ and ‘Offpage SEO’.
While SEO may be easy, it can be time consuming. For example ‘Offpage SEO’ or backlink building can take a long time and can be quite hard work. Therefore if you can afford it, it might be worthwhile employing a search engine optimisation firm. However, you certainly don’t need to pay $1000’s of dollars. You can spend between $100 – $500 and get extremely good results.
That just about raps it up. I will be going into exact details about all the ‘Onpage’ and ‘Offpage’ SEO factors, so don’t worry about that if you don’t have a clue what they are yet. Just be aware of the fact that search engine optimisation is something that you really need to do, if you are serious about making money online.
