Search Engine Optimisation

Imagine yourself as a potential customer. You access a search engine and type in some key words to find what you're looking for then you punch in: enter. You will know that your search engine will come back to you with 1,546,029 results. Now, as the potential customer, do you sift through all these results just to find one or maybe two companies that can meet your needs? Of course not!

According to online statistics, consumers only search the first two pages of search results, assuming that the top 20 companies in the results are the best fit for them. So now lets switch back to reality. You're the company, brand or business relying on these potential customers to discover how effective your services are, how cutting edge your product is, or how much money your business can save them.

If your website doesn't come up in the first 20 search engine results, where the eyeballs really are, it doesn't matter how great, fantastic or revolutionary your service or product is. The simple fact is, you will be relegated to the bleak and empty world of cyber limbo where you still exist but no one even knows you're out there. Enter Search Engine Optimisation.

WHAT IS SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION?

Search engine optimisation, also known as SEO, is the process of optimising a website in order to gain top positions on search engines for search queries relevant to your business. Optimising your website so that its highly ranked in major search engines will help potential customers or clients find your website and drive an increased volume of targeted traffic and potential leads and sales to your site.

HOW DO SEARCH ENGINES WORK?

It's useful at this point to explain how search engines work, as in order to understand SEO, you first need to consider how search engines rank web pages. The job of a search engine is to provide the user with relevant results based on the search query which they have submitted. It is in the interests of the search engine to return the most relevant results first, as a user will quickly tire of a search engine which consistently returns irrelevant web pages, and may go somewhere else for the information they need.

To do this, search engines send out programmes (sometimes these are called 'spiders' or 'robots') which 'crawl' websites to evaluate their content. The data is then collated and indexed by the search engine so that when a user types a search term into the search engine, it only needs to look through it's internal files to return results rather than searching the web. The search engine will therefore rank the pages on your site based on how closely the data collected by the spiders / robots matches the user's search terms.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION
Good, savvy Search Engine Optimisation is not an option in today's fast-moving markets it's essential: Over 90% of internet users finding the products and services they require through search engines with search engines driving more than half of online purchases. Therefore it is essential that your business ranks highly within search engines so that the maximum number of visitors and customers reach your website before that of your competitors.

 

Effective Search Engine Optimisation serves to achieve Four key objectives for your business:

1. Achieve a high search engine ranking in the most influential search engines for relevant search queries that describe your business.
2. Drive a significant volume of qualified traffic to your website.
3. Improve your conversion rate- ie leads and sales.
4. High rankings, high click rates and high conversions mean one thing: you'll achieve a great ROI from search engine optimisation and significantly increase your profits and sales.

HIGH SEARCH ENGINE RANKING
Just being listed in the search engines isn't enough, it is essential that your business ranks at the top in the search results. A recent Forrester Research study revealed, 90% of Internet users do not go past the top 30 search engine results & 64% of searchers never looked past the first search results page. Effective SEO ensures that your business is prominently ranked for your chosen search queries on Page 1 of key search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

SIGNIFICANT VOLUMES OF QUALIFIED TRAFFIC
Simply put, if your website ranks high for your chosen search queries for your business- known as keywords- in the key search engines then you will receive clicks from users. The more traffic you get to your website, the higher chance of leads and sales. Further, the traffic search engines deliver to your website is highly qualified because users are actively searching for information related to your business. SEO is one of the few marketing strategies where your targeted audienceis actively engaged in the process of seeking information about products and services your business offers. They are therefore more receptive to your marketing message and this greatly increases your conversion rates.

MEASURABLE RESULTS
SEO is one of the few marketing strategies where it is easy to measure the results of your efforts. Amongst other key metrics you can analyse in real time:

1. Your search engine ranking
2. Which keywords are most effective in generating traffic and subsequent leads or sales for your business.
3. The volume of traffic to your site.
4. Which sites are sending traffic to your site.
5. Your conversion rates: registrations, leads & sales.

This real-time measurement allows you to assess what is working and what needs to be improved, and continuously modify and improve your efforts.

LONG-TERM IMPACT
Many of the online marketing alternatives to Search Engine Optimisation require a significant ongoing investment to drive traffic and sales, whereas Search Engine Optimisation benefits continue for months and years after an initial one-off investment. Other key online marketing tools such as pay-per-click advertising, banner advertising, email marketing all require ongoing expenditure to obtain and maintain website traffic. The benefits from Search Engine Optimisation are sustainable and ongoing; the traffic from all other forms of Internet Marketing last till the budget is over.

HIGH ROI
At the end of the day, marketing's ultimate purpose is to drive more sales for your business. Pound for pound, dollar for dollar, SEO typically brings you a higher Return On your Investment than any comparable form of marketing. SEO brings the highest conversions of any online marketing method. In terms of other online key marketing disciplines such as online advertising and email, there are 5-6 times more online purchases made from traffic delivered by search engines than all other forms of online marketing. (Source: Forrester Research)

 

At SEEN, we are fully aware we are only as good as our clients ROI. It's not just about rankings, or visitor numbers, but goals achieved. Everything we do therefore is focused, and measured on client ROI.

A GLOBAL MARKETPLACE
The Internet has no physical boundaries. From boutique businesses through to large organisations, SEO allows organisations to maximise their exposure globally across key search engines so that they can sell their products or services to countries all around the world and to regions throughout their own country.

LEVELS THE PLAYING FIELD
Small businesses have traditionally struggled to keep up with the larger organisations when it comes to marketing budget. Effective search engine optimisation levels this playing field so that even the sole proprietor can keep up with considerably larger businesses. By targeting specific and niche keywords relevant to your business, whatever the size of your organisation and marketing budget, you can generate highly targeted visitors to your site who are looking for what you are selling.