1. What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
2. Do I need to perform SEO?
3. How I can benefit from SEO?
4. How to get Search Engine Optimization?
5. How to measure the success of SEO campaign?

1. What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Search Engine Optimization includes activity to bring more targeted traffic from search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN to your website. Under Targeted Traffic we mean traffic from people who are interested in your products or services and looking for this kind information on Search Engines. In order to make your information available to online visitors your website have to be:

a. Visible to Search Engines - Search Engine friendly.
b. Located on 1-3 pages on the results of Search Engine.
c. Contain useful information (text, pictures) or an offer to your potential clients.

SEO is a set of marketing, advertising, communication, web design, and programming techniques that will help promote your website on the web. Getting a higher page ranking on search engines will bring interested and targeted traffic to your business

2. Do I need to perform SEO?
Probably no if your company name is Dell, or Sony or your product name is Corolla or Ipod. If you spend millions of dollars on promotions of your brand name, you are guaranteed to have thousands of links to your website and it would be easy to guess your web site domain name. If your name is My Small Business and you would like to drive more traffic to your website, the answer is yes. How else you can offer your services or products to online visitors?

3. How I can benefit from SEO?
Today most of visitors to your web site will come from search engines by typing your business related keywords and phrases, not your domain name. There are billions of web pages on internet now. For your keywords there will be millions or hundreds of thousands of competing pages. Search engine marketing will help your site rank higher than your competition. This is why it is very important to get the best visibility for your website on search engines. Normally you could expect that more than 80% of visitors on your website come from search engines. Usually most searchers will scan 1-3 pages of search results, this is why it is so important to be on the first pages of the Search Engine. More targeted visitors to your website mean more potential clients and sales.

4. How to get Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Keywords and Key Phrases
Keywords and Key Phrases are the most important part of your website. You need to learn your customer's language in order to understand what keywords and phrases they will use to find you. For example, a search for "classical music" will bring traffic to your web site, but "classical violin music records" will make more sales for you.

Meta Tags and Title
Title and Meta Tags are HTML code in each of your page. When you do web site design or Search Engine Optimization use Meta Tags to provide Search Engines with information relative to your business topic and Content. Remember, attract users, not cruisers!

Content
When you create a website it will have some content in form of text and graphics. Today people do screening of web pages, not reading, so description of your products and services should be easy to find and understand. Providing headers, lists and white space will help to get an idea about the topic of your website more quickly. Note, search engines cant read graphical text and images, so good written text is the important part of your website and the main source of information for search engines. The site should have simple and easy to understand navigation between your pages.

Search Engine Submission
After you have done you work with text and Meta Tags and website design you are ready to publish your website on the web. Now it is time to submit your site to search engines. By submitting your website to search engines you will let the search engines know about the topic of your website. Search engines will come to your web site periodically and index your pages. It can take from 4 weeks to 4 months for your web site to be indexed by search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN and others. If you have problems with navigation on your site not all pages can be indexed and visible on search engines, so your visitors will not able to see some of your important pages. I would not recommend you use any kind of software for submission of your website because the software can't place your web site in the right category on a search engine. Some of search engines will not accept software submission anyway, so you will need to do this manually.

5. How to measure the success of SEO campaign?

There are several ways to measure result of Search Engine Optimization for your website.

It is better to compare your existing traffic and traffic after Search Engine Optimization. SEO takes from four weeks to four months to get changes noticeable by Search Engines. The length of time depends on the indexing schedule of search engines, type of Search Engine and other factors.

The top placement of your website on Search Engines is not guaranteed forever. Keep an eye on your website ranking and placement on search engines for your keywords. Do SEO periodically. SEO is a time-consuming effort and there are no short cuts for top ranking.

You can verify your website Page Rank free with VendorLand.ca

Sergey Pavlov Certified Digital Media Specialist.
Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization.

Sergey can be reached at (519) 746-3239 or email: sergey@vendorland.ca

Copyright 2007 VendorLand.ca Canadian Small Business Web Directory

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