SEO is one of those terms that’s thrown around by web developers and computer geeks who are ‘in the know, they tell you that you need it and they’re right. But, do you know what it actually is? Thought not…
SEO is an acronym which stands for ‘search engine optimisation’. When we say search engine we mean the big shots like Google, Yahoo, Bing etc which are basically tools online that you use to search for things. Optimisation of course means making something better or more effective, for whatever reason – in this case, we want to get more visitors to your website to in turn get you more sales and recognition. Following so far?
So we now know the purpose of SEO, but how does it actually work? Well, it works in many different ways but essentially it makes your website more likeable to search engines. The most common and recognised type of SEO is via keyword optimising. Because remember, as clever as the search engines’ are they need us to make things simple for them so we can work together in harmony.
You’ll have heard a lot about making your website content ‘SEO friendly’, which requires you to define your USP and sum up your business in a few keywords – but why? Why choose keywords? I want to promote my business’s many unique selling points not just a few! I hear you say. In essence, you need to think like your customers. Step into their shoes and think what brought them to you in the first place. Was it your amazing Bakewell tarts, or your friendly staff? Is that what they tell people about? Because once you’ve done that, you’ll become quite a specialist online, don’t you know.
When you have defined your keywords, your website guy will get to work doing the coding and back-end web development bit, that you don’t need to understand! Then, we have liftoff. Now we know that our keywords have been defined, we know that the search engines like us. We can now expect that when we type our keywords into our search engines, our website will appear in the first few pages. Out of about 1,000,000! Impressive, eh? That means that when our customers are searching our keywords, our website will be much more visible to them and thus more effective – optimised.
