SEO Marketing

SEO Marketing

SEO Marketing - Why You Need It

Search engine optimization, otherwise referred to as SEO marketing, is the best long term method of traffic generation. Although it can take some time to implement and see results, this traffic generation method can beat out all others when it comes to longevity. However, this is only if it is done correctly. One of the main benefits of this marketing method is that once effectively implemented, there is very little you need to do, apart from maintenance.  You will continue to see an increase in traffic, which often has a snow ball effect - in other words, the Traffic starts increasing in small amounts, but as time goes on, the Traffic volumes starts to increase more rapidly.

With SEO, you need to structure your website in a way so that it can be easily navigated by human visitors, as well as by the search engines robots. The SEO process generally involves using certain methods within your website (commonly known as on-site, or on-page, optimisation), as well as working with other websites that help give your website authority and visibility, without necessarily making any changes on your website (commonly known as off-site, or off-page, optimisation).

Online marketing is basically an attempt to increase the Traffic to your website. So, how does on-site and off-site SEO work towards this goal? To start with, on-site SEO involves changing the meta tags of your website's code. These include title, description and keywords tags. The basis of these changes is to allow the search engines to be able to easily identify what your website is about. The title gives a general overview of the content of the website. The description briefly summarizes the web page, while the keyword tags tell the search engine robots what your key terms of reference are within your webpage. These are the "hooks" within your website that the search engine robots will use to ascertain relevance of your webpage to its topic.

There are also hyperlinks that you place on your website to connect the various different pages throughout your site. These hyperlinks make your site easy to navigate around, making it more user friendly. As a result, you retain a visitor more on your website.  This is well received by the search engine robots, as earch engines want their users to have a good experience so they keep coming back. The result is better rankings for your website in the search results, and therefore more Traffic.

You can also have hyperlinks in your site that connect different webpages to other outside sources of value to your website. For instance, you can connect your website to another authority website that goes in to more details about the subject matter within your webpage. This saves you the need to go in to the deep details yourself. Just make sure they’re not a direct competitor! The result of doing this can be better rankings and more visibility for your website (and again, therefore more Traffic). As a result of these on-page SEO techniques, you end up getting more targeted Traffic, more visibility and more authority in your chosen niche.

With the off-page SEO techniques, you simply siphon Traffic from other websites by having a link to your website placed on them. Besides the direct Traffic siphoned, you also get better rankings on the search engines, especially if the links came "voluntarily" from authority websites with high rankings themselves. There are a number of things that you can do to get these off-page SEO techniques implemented. These include writing and submitting articles to article directories with a link back to your website, using social media to get backlinks and Traffic to your site, and submitting your website to online directories. These different avenues open up many channels of potential incoming Traffic to your website, making them an effective addition to an SEO marketing strategy.

So, how does SEO and other marketing strategies like mail-outs and listings in phone directories compare? Well, to begin with, SEO is far much more effective than many traditional offline campaign methods. It is also a very scale-able, adaptable, marketing strategy, allowing you to ‘spy’ on, and beat your competitors easily.  All you really need is some good content, quality keyword research and the help of an SEO professional. With SEO, you usually also end up relatively little money in the long run. The only time you may need some start-up capital is when you will hire the services of an SEO services company, which is highly recommended. However, if your business model is set up correctly, you can be confident that you will be able to reclaim this investment capital in a pretty quickly, through the increase in sales and leads for your higher volume of website Traffic.

Perhaps the best addition to compliment your SEO campaign efforts is social media marketing. Social networks attract massive amounts of Traffic from people who want to make friends, as well as those who want to network for business reasons. Some of the best social media networks you can use to increase Traffic to your website, as well as gain some well ranked back links, include Facebook and Twitter.

With Facebook, you can set up a fan page, where you share news and offers on your products with an excited and targeted group of fans. These people will often share these updates with their friends on Facebook, especially if you have sent out a good offer.  The effect of  this can be that your marketing campaign becomes viral. This in turn brings you more prospects, more buyers, and more return customers. The effect is often the same with Twitter.  You Twitter followers may retweet your messages or tweet their followers about your products and share news on special offers.  This is especially likely if you manage to create a brand identity that is likeable and relatable.  Every time your website link is shared on Twitter, you will have an in pointing link from this well ranked website. The result is better ranking for your site. With Twitter, all you need to do is to create an account for your business, follow as many targeted users as you can and start sending out interesting messages. If done successfully, many of these users will, in turn, follow you back, and create a buzz about your products.

When implemented correctly, SEO marketing is the most successful, most reliable, and most cost effective way of getting large increases in Traffic to your website, leading to more potential clients/customers, more sales, as well as many return customers to your website.