There are literally hundreds of millions of sites on the world wide web in addition to tens of billions of web pages. Search engines exist to help people navigate through this often confusing environment, and they employ a complex algorithm to quickly sort through all this noise to deliver search results. Understanding this algorithm and have a search engine strategy in place is often important to small businesses you wish to attract more traffic to their online presence. Indeed, a search engine optimization strategy can lead to more foot traffic as well for brick and mortar businesses.
What is search engine optimization?
Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to various methodologies used to help a website break through the noise of search engine results and rise to the top of the search rankings. When you use Google or another search engine, there are natural search results and paid search results. The paid search results can cost a business anywhere from a few cents to a few dollars per click, and can be substantially expensive to continue maintaining in the long term. So while paid ads on search engines can be helpful in the short-term as they can lead to a sharp boost on traffic, they are not a good long-term strategy.
For small businesses interested in the long-term, SEO is the way to go. The natural search results are free, and are often the results that a user most easily gravitates to. However, most search engines only display 10 search results per page. As a result, there is a huge drop-off from appearing in the top 10 results versus appearing on the second page of search results. There is a similar drop-off between showing in the top 3 search results versus at the bottom of the top 10. Rising to the top, then, allows a small business to gain a substantial amount of traffic at relatively little cost.
But getting to the top requires a robust search marketing strategy. This primarily means good content management, which refers to providing content that web users will find helpful. Since web users do searches on specific terms, it is good to target those terms in the content itself and to write pieces of content around those terms. This then enables Google and other search engines to determine that your piece of content may prove helpful to the specific term.
Keyword research is a key element of SEO
The first step of SEO is simply keyword research. This means ascertaining what terms your customers are using when reaching your site. However, it also means targeting keywords for which you have a fair chance of rising to the top search results for. For example, when searching for an SEO business, it's beneficial to target their local area. So an SEO business in Fort Collins would target 'Fort Collins SEO.' Likewise, a pet store may wish to target dog owners, but there is a lot of competition for the keyword of 'dogs.' So it may instead be better to target 'Fort Collins dogs' or 'Fort Collins accessories for dogs.' That way, the business reaches its target audience.