SEO ensures that a website is accessible to search engines and also enhances the chances of it being found by search engines. It’s quite common for internet users to click on websites that rank higher on search engine results. So the higher a website ranks among organic search engine results, the greater the chances of users visiting it and the more traffic a website will receive which in turn may convert to sales.
SEO has evolved over the last couple of years, and it continues doing so. The same applies to web design which has equally changed over the last few years, employing different modern technologies to increase efficiency and visitors to a site.
What Does SEO Involve?
Just as web design methodologies have changed, much like search engines, the responsibilities and attitudes of SEO towards websites have followed suit. SEO encapsulates a set of skills and activities that most developers and business owners never consider yet they make a crucial component of any online marketing strategy. SEO involves the use of several small components that fall into three main categories. These are:
Optimization
SEO in its pure form states exactly that, Search Engine optimization. New websites built by developers who have a thorough understanding of SEO should in general do well. Back in the day when web standards didn’t exist, websites could get away and find themselves ranking high on search engine results. However these days onsite SEO alone just isn’t enough to get your site through, and getting it wrong on the other hand can be yield catastrophic consequences. However there is some light at the end of the tunnel for non optimized sites. As search engines continue evolving, they will start handling non-optimized sites and on-site factors are bound to become less important in the near future. But for no now, search engines regard well optimized websites far more than the former. In addition to this, search engines pride websites that bear more than just optimization, but consider other external factors such as; links; content and keywords.
Marketing Strategy
More importantly, SEO is about a business working out its promotional strategy. This is more accurately referred to as SEM (Search Engine Marketing). SEM involves several tactics that can be implemented to help businesses put their message across and attract visitors to their sites. In fact very few websites employ this important marketing strategy. Social media, link acquisition, affiliates, content marketing, pay per click and a dozen other tools all make part of the arsenal.
There is an endless list of companies are looking to take a large share of the market spoils, but most average business owners are not fully equipped with the necessary skills to make crucial decisions without a SEO specialist to carry out such effective and complex marketing work.
Analysis
In conclusion, SEO is also about analysis. Although tweeting, blogging and hanging around Wi-Fi spots may seem cool, many people are still geeks at heart. Through data obtained from such platforms you can see how people are finding your website and how they are interacting with it. Data collected from such sources is what in overall makes online marketing a very powerful strategy. Unlike traditional marketing efforts that didn’t really give in-depth analysis on how potential customers were interacting with you, online marketing efforts provide you with a clear path into determining ROI and the effectiveness of your web marketing.
Numbers don’t lie, although they may confuse at times they never lie and tools such as Google analytics help business owners see exactly how their website is performing. Analysis covers the point of convergence between the science of digital technology and the art of online marketing.
