What is SEO and Why Should You Care?

It’s safe to assume that everyone reading this article has made a considerable investment in moving their company’s presence onto the internet. Some of you have had amazing results doing so, while others are probably a bit frustrated that you haven’t seen any real impact on your business at all. So what gives; why are some businesses much more effective on the web than others?

No single factor makes or breaks a company’s success online; just as one particular factor does not make or break success offline. Many aspects play a key role in determining the kinds of results you’ll see, including:

The competitive landscape of your industry
The price of your offering
Your sales territory: local, national, or worldwide
The design of your site
How well your site is Search Engine Optimized (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one factor that impacts your success online. No matter what industry you are in, what product or service you are selling, or how you are priced. Ironically, it’s also a subject that very few small businesses know anything about.

What is SEO?

SEO is the art and science of optimizing your website. Optimizing SEO means that your site will receive an increased volume and quality of organic traffic from searches performed on keywords or phrases relevant to your site’s content.

That’s a mouthful, I know. Let’s try this:

SEO makes your website show up when you want it to without having to pay the search engine to make it happen.

There…that’s better, isn’t it?

Why should you care?

You should care because your website is the biggest opportunity to drive new business for your company without spending a fortune to do so; no matter what industry you are in or what you sell. SEO is the “blocking and tackling” of web competitiveness.

Three primary ways you get traffic to your website:

Direct – Someone types in your website address and goes directly to your site.
Paid advertisement – A user sees your advertisements on another site or on their search engine of choice, clicks on it and is redirected to your site.
Organic search – A user searches for a keyword or phrase on their search engine and sees a result that leads to your site in the “organic” search returns (organic meaning that the search engine has determined that your site is a relevant option to be returned to the searcher based on the keyword or phrase they used to search.)

Of all of these, which type is the traffic you would prefer to receive?

You could argue that you would prefer #1. However, in order to get traffic in any real volume this way, you would have to have spent a lot of time and money building a brand that people recall by name. That’s great if you can do it, but if you can, you probably aren’t reading this article (thus our focus on the small business!)

You probably realize why #2 isn’t your preferred choice right away – you had to pay for it. While this is a great way of getting traffic, (and the topic of a future article…) it isn’t the optimal way.

The optimal way is to have someone find you in the organic results of their favorite search engine. Why is this optimal? Two primary reasons:

You didn’t have to pay for it.
By showing up in the organic listings of the search engine, it is likely that the searcher has found a good match for what they were looking for – you.

How do I put SEO to work for my company?

Unless you have a real interest in keeping up with this stuff, your best option is probably to outsource this work to a 3rd party. Whomever you hire will be engaged in the following activities (and possibly more) to put SEO to work for you:

Analyzing the competition in your market to determine where they are having success and which online “fronts” to attack them on
Optimizing the code of your website to be seen as relevant to the search engines
Optimizing the content of your website to be seen as relevant to the search engines
Building links to other sites on the internet that will raise the perceived value of your site in the eyes of the search engines

This is a quickly growing and changing field, and it’s a full time job to keep on top of the knowledge and skills necessary to be competitive. Find a good resource to help you and get competitive on the web!

For more information on this article, please contact mcooch@everonit.com.

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