SEO basics: How SEO benefits your business ?

I'm sure you have heard about this term before. If not, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process which helps your website show 'up' in internet search results when in need.

In this post I would like to share the basics of Internet Search Ranking or How Search Engines (Google,Yahoo,Bing,Baidu etc) show your website out of "billions of similar kind" in the search result page.

A basic knowledge is always recommended before you go to the advanced Social factors or any "fancy stuff" in SEO. After reading this post you will answer these questions:-

1. What is SEO?
2. What are/aren't Search Engine looking for?
3. How you should build your website so that it can attract your customers as well as Search engines?
4. How SEO can benefit your business?

What is SEO?

SEO doesn't mean that you are cheating Search Engines to promote your website ! Instead it is the method of asking Search Engines to recommend your content for specific searches by

• Creating and expressing webcontent so as to enhance the user experience.
• Clearly communicating to Search Engines about your content.

What are/aren't Search Engine looking for?

Basically a Search Engine recommend those pages which is highly relevant to the search term used by the user. Those search terms which you enter in search bar, like "how to make tea" or "best dry cleaning services" are called as Keywords. So how do Search Engines find the relevancy of webpages for the particular keyword?

• Content : is the information you get from a website. It includes all the Text, Graphics, Video, Flash etc of a site. A good website arranges the information into paragraphs with titles, subtitles, snippets etc. Search Engines do give importance to those factors and rate the page.
• Authority : is termed by the importance the page is getting from other similar content around web. Say,if Site A and Site B are portfolios of popular doctors and they mention Site C (which is a medical website) in their pages, then obviously SE will give high priority to Site C. The same is the case of authorship tags attached to a website. There are various ways by which Google determines the authority factor.
• User Experience : is calculated by Search Engines by an analysis of user activities on a web site. How does the site look? Does the site loads quickly? Is it easy to navigate around? Does it look safe? Does user quits the website within a short period? ..etc

How you should build your website to make it SE friendly?

A web-portal is a way to communicate to your audience. It should be Search Engine friendly equally as it satisfies the customers. Go through some basic tips which you may keep in mind before building an online presence.

• Know your Business Goals.

A Business goal is to convert Browsers to buyers. So your website should force visitors to do some actions in your website. Make a list of the main products you are going to sell through and do some keyword research.

• Be consistent with the Domain name.

Domain name resembles a Brand Name as in real world. So try to be consistent with the new domain name you select for your business. Naked domain name (without www) should point to www.domain.com or vice versa. Always use any one of popular extensions for your domain ie .com or .net or .org. Same is the case of the Web-hosting service you are choosing.

• Include the juice to Search Engines in every single page.

Each webpage is like a Business brochure. It should have a clear Title, Description and Content neatly arranged with eye-catchy  images. Search Engines need these information in special invisible codes called Meta tags, which should be included in the page along with the visible content. Since Search Engines can't read image/video content, those are done by ALT-tags given to images/videos while embedding to the content.

• Socialize your website.

The more popular your website in Social networks Search Engine will value that content as a rich user experience. So try to make Fan-pages, Brand pages in every Social networks you find.

• Update the content frequently.

No one welcomes old information when they can get a fresh content a click away. Its recommended to start a blog on your business website which is an easy way to update content. Search Engines love Text more than any other form of content representation. Its clever to include some related videos or even create one into your content since online video sharing proved to be the second most popular information provider in internet.

How SEO can benefit your business?

Targeted SEO can boost your Website traffic and there by exposing your business to the billions around the world. There are other means of boosting your website exposure in internet like Advertisements like Facebook ads, Paid ads in Popular websites or Pay Per Click Campaigns. But what makes SEO special from these and why all the business owners go for SEO their websites? 

The reason is

1. SEO is cheap !
2. SEO is Long-lasting !
3. SEO is Efficient !

Web industry continues to give importance to relevancy. The method will change from time to time. May be you find several changes in Algorithm by which Search Engines work, but you may find relevant content always get to the top result in Search results.