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Why is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) important?
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By Samer Shami
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Did you get tired one day from everybody's continual insistencethat the Internet would revolutionise the way companies dobusiness? Therefore, to ‘get with the times' you hired acompany to produce a tasteful, professional and up-to-datewebsite. You integrated it with your backend accounting andfinancial systems so people could order products directly fromthe website. You then sat back and waited for the cash to rollin, right?
Now raise your hand if it didn't turn out tobe that simple.
In the mad rush to get something (andanything) onto the Internet, companies made the leap unprepared.Many businesses forgot to ask one simply question: How willcustomers actually find our website?
Since you literallyshare the Internet with another million websites, it is animportant question. Being a perceptive marketing person, yourealise there are four ways Internet users typically locate yoursite: - Learning it from traditional media such as TV,print, radio, brochures, business cards etc.
- Link fromanother website
- Recommended by someone
- Foundusing a Search Engine (SE) such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN etc.
You only have major control over the first method -throw enough money into advertising and everyone will know aboutthe site. You can even buy links from other websites such as theYellow Pages. For companies that don't have the marketing budgetof a large multi-national corporation, the fourth method is theonly real manner of attracting new visitors.
To make SEsa viable method, your website must appear in the top ten searchresults. Why? Nine out of ten Internet surfers do not go pastthe first 30 search results. Many do not even proceed furtherthan the top 10 results.
How do you get your website intothe top 10? An industry has arisen with the means and knowledgeto answer this question. The process they employ is generalisedas Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
SEO is a methodology(some would argue art) employed to improve a website's rank inSE results given targeted ‘keywords'. Keywords are thephrase(s) your target market uses to limit search results tolocate your product or services. For example, you want yourwebsite to have a high rank when someone searches for‘ipod accessories'; but you don't really care if it rateshighly for ‘tropical fish' - that is not your target.
The key to this industry lies in the fact that SEs areactually very limited software programs. They don't have theintelligence to understand everything they see on the Internet.They use ever-evolving rules to score and rate a website'sability to answer a particular question. Armed with thisknowledge, we can break the SEO process into three generalcategories: - HTML code optimisation:The first stage is the checking, and re-writing if necessary, ofnavigation and content structures on your website. SEs do notunderstand objects such as images, Flash, JavaScript etc. Theywill simply ignore them. There is no point proceeding anyfurther if the SE cannot understand what it is seeing.Programmers undertake this category of SEO. A deep understandingof current web coding standards and techniques is necessary.Software packages often produce very poor results, and itusually takes a lot of human intervention to ensure optimumaccessibility.
- Content tailoring: A SErates web pages according to their relevancy given a set ofkeywords. You must therefore tailor your content with thesekeywords in mind at all times. Fundamental to determining whichkeywords are relevant is an understanding of your target market.You must know the typical questions they ask to find answers.There are websites such as WordTracker (www.wordtracker.com)that can help you to determine commonly used keywords.
Remember: this is not a race to see how many keywords can fillthe page. There is an optimum keyword density. Too dense and itis considered stuffing or spamming - you will be penalised. Toolittle, and you are not considered an authoritative source.Choosing to hone in on a specific set of keywords per page isalso prudent. You are not trying to optimise for everybody onthe Internet - only those who ask a specific question. - Cutting-edge optimisation: SEs usealgorithms that are proprietary secrets and continually evolveover time. Categories 1 and 2 focus on making your websiteaccessible to SEs and ensuring you have high quality content.These are well-established principles guaranteed to improve yourrankings - regardless of how the SE algorithms advance.
To give their clients an advantage, SEO practitioners cansometimes try to abuse the SE algorithms. They may takeadvantage of loopholes or shady methods. A simple example is‘stuffing' a page with invisible text - white text on awhite background. This is invisible to humans, but SEs used toindex this content. If taken one-step further by stuffing thepage with unrelated (but popular) keywords, it becomes‘spamming'. SEs are smarter today and will notice thesedevious tricks. Websites using them will be heavily penalised.
Category 3 is a moving target - and hence carries risk ifpoorly executed. What works today is innovative, but may beheavily penalised in the future once people abuse it to skewresults. You should always be wary of introducing anyinitiatives that fall into this category.
Soif you decide to give your site the SEO treatment, how longbefore you see the results?
Google re-indexes websiteseveryday of the year. The process it follows ensures every entryin its database is re-indexed every 4-6 weeks. Google willre-index ‘news' sites much quicker - almost daily - tostay current. Other SEs use roughly similar periods betweenre-indexes. Therefore it can take up to 4-6 weeks for changes inthe ranking to be observed.
Will the three categories inSEO improve your ranking? Yes. Will they keep you there? No. TheSE algorithms evolve over time. SEO is a form of marketing andis therefore an on going process of monitoring, obtainingfeedback and tweaking. Most companies do not release a ton ofadvertising material with getting feedback as to how they canimprove it in the future.
Please remember that SEO is notthe ultimate and final word on creating a profitable webpresence. It is only one aspect of your Internet marketingstrategy. A good SEO practitioner understands this. They realisethat there is more to the Internet than just search engines.Obtaining links from reputable websites, advertising usingtraditional media and ensuring your customers recommend you totheir friends is just as important. If they don't reflect thisin their overall strategy, consider someone else who does.
For more information on this topic, please visit ourSEOinformation page, where can you download an extended versionof this article, including a Search Engine OptimisationWhitepaper.
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