Search Engine Optimisation or SEO – What is it? You have probably heard about it, and know that you should use it in your website. But there is so much information out there about what it is, and it can all get a bit confusing. Here I will explain to you what SEO is, and briefly, how it works.
Search Engine Optimisation is a way of organically enhancing the amount of traffic going to your website, which in turn will potentially create better business. SEO is carried out by implementing a variety of different features on your website that will boost your rankings on different search engines.
Why is SEO important for your business? It helps to boost rankings on a search engine, so when a user types in a query which is related to your website, if you have implemented good SEO, you will appear higher up on the page. This means the user is more likely to click onto your website, and are more likely to use your business.
Search engines will only show relevant information to a search, so you know that the information you are being given is relevant. When you use a search engine, you trust that the information you are being given is correct, so a higher ranking means more click-throughs to a website.
There are so many different ways SEO can be used, and a very important part of SEO is making your website easy and attractive to users, but also easy for search engine robots to understand, so that you can be ranked higher on the page.
Search engine robots or “crawlers” are able to crawl through thousands of documents to find the most relevant websites to a search query. When they do find these websites or pages, they store pieces of information, ready to be displayed to users when they are needed.
Some handy tips on how to make your website more accessible for search engine robots is to use plenty of keywords, have clear and accurate content and don’t use too much rich media, like Flash documents, as this can hide the content that the crawlers look for.
If you just focus on your website being simple for search engine robots to find, but don’t focus on how easy and accurate your information is for the user, it is less likely that a person will use your website. One of the most important parts of SEO is to make your website for the user, not for the search engine.
Now you know what Search Engine Optimisation is, you can begin to use it in your website. The next blog post in this SEO series will be "Why Are Keywords An Important Part Of SEO?".
