In today’s market, having a website to advertise your business is essential. Websites have become the easiest and fastest way for your business to be found. That being said, your website has to find ways to gain visibility, and this is most commonly done through search engine optimization (SEO). Google is by far the most commonly used and will be the example here. Although there are alternatives – Yahoo, Bing, AOL – they all work on the same principles.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) works to enhance your site’s visibility by improving its ranking; it determines how far up your site shows on the list of unpaid or organic search results. Google will rank your site depending on how relevant and trustworthy it appears to be. Sites that appear on the first page of the list will always get more traffic. Let’s face it, when was the last time you looked at page 3 of your search results? (most people don’t even bother to scroll down: all the good real estate is right at the top.) By boosting your ranking, SEO ensures more people access your site, which is always good for your business.
So how does it work?
Spiders
Search engines use software called spiders or crawlers to search for key terms within the content of your site. This determines relevance and so affects your ranking. Spiders spend more time looking at your site depending on how often your content changes, so to get their attention it’s a good idea to be regularly updating your content. This can be as simple as changing some of the texts or images. Setting up a blog with relevant information for your target market that is updated weekly will ensure that the spiders are always on the alert for your site. Sites that change often get higher search rank and this will improve your ranking.
Google Adwords
Google Adwords is a tool that helps advertisers to identify the most relevant keywords for their target and charges for the service. You can also pay for search terms on a “pay per click” (PPC) basis, or by bidding for them. All of this can improve your ranking if you can afford to use it. SEO businesses offer their services too, promising to integrate Google Adwords with other techniques to drive your site up the rankings.
Links
PageRank, another Google tool, is the number given to your site out of 10 based on inbound and outbound links. This helps helping Google decide how trustworthy your site is. If your site is linked to another with a higher PageRank score, yours will rise through association. There’s no way of controlling inbound links, but there are ways to increase your score.
Spiders spend more time on your page if you have prominent internal links. Social media has become more and more important in advertising and is factored into rankings, so having your page linked from your social media site is a must. Having space in a free open directory like DMOZ, or a more specialized listing for your field is a great way of having a link at no extra cost.
SEO can help your business. The more attention your business receives can have a direct impact on how successful you can be. Ask yourself whether you need to hire someone to accomplish your goals, or if you do it yourself, how exactly to go about it. Whatever you decide, making some basic changes can make a huge difference.
If you would like more information regarding SEO and how to effectively boost your rankings, Stratosphere Networks can help. Call us today at (877) 599-3999 or fill out our contact form.