Submitted by Jan Smith on Mon, 05/25/2009
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of those marketing terms that sounds sophisticated and geeky and complicated and therefore only available to businesses that have sophisticated geeky web guys who understand the complicated stuff.
Actually, SEO is a fairly simple concept and isn't hard to implement. And when you understand how powerful it can be, you'll see why it's worth the effort.
Basically, SEO tries to improve the traffic a website receives from search engines. Typically, sites that appear higher in the "organic" (unpaid) search results list receive more visitors than sites that appear lower in the list.
So how do you get your site to appear higher on the list? SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. The process involves determining the keywords that are most relevant to the visitors you want for your site, then editing the content and HTML code so the site appears more relevant to those keywords and will appear higher in the results.
But don't get carried away. While SEO is one of many goals that you should have for your site, it probably isn't the most important. Your first consideration should be making your site function well for your visitors. Randomly sprinkling keywords around may help people find your site, but that's useless if visitors are confused and unable to find what they were looking for.
Techniques to improve search optimization include using effective page titles, putting appropriate information in meta tags (text hidden in a site's HTML), and creating a useful URL structure and site navigation.
Not considering SEO when designing a website can be a critical mistake. Not long ago I came across a site created by an organization that wants to make sure the kids are taken care of when a family is going through a divorce. Unfortunately, the site was created entirely of graphics -- all of the words on every page are part of a image. There is literally no plain text for a search engine to read. What does that mean? If the search engine can't tell what a site is about -- by reading the words on the site -- it won't display the site in any search results.
The site I'm referring to is attractive and the organization seems caring. But I'm afraid that the parents and children who need its services will never find out about it, because its site will never appear in a list of internet search results.
That's an example of a site that needs a radical makeover to take advantage of SEO. But, depending on the current structure of your site, you might only need to make a few tweaks to get a lot better positioning in search results. And that leads to more visitors and eventually more business. And even for a very small business, it is definitely worth the time and effort.