Having at least a basic knowledge of web marketing will benefit anyone looking to drive more traffic to his or her site. Today’s generation is noticeably more technologically savvy than past generations. Chances are that if someone is interested in a product or service, he or she will look it up online before trying anything else. With the internet being the primary tool people depend on for fast information; it is crucial to any company’s success to consider search engine optimization.
What is search engine optimization (SEO)? Simply put, it is the strategic placement of target keywords on a web page in order to obtain a higher search engine ranking. When people type in the service or product that you sell into a search engine, you want your site to list high on the first page of links that the search engine returns.
Say you just opened up a bakery in NJ and are hoping to attract traffic to your website. Quite frankly, most people nowadays don’t have the time/patience to browse past the first page of results in search engine returns. So when people type “bakery NJ” in the search engine and your website doesn’t appear on the first page of results, then you’ve just missed out on potential customers who might have been willing to try out your store had they known about it. Fortunately, thanks to internet marketing, even if you don’t rank on the first page now, that doesn’t mean you are doomed to being stuck on page 20 of the search engine results for “bakery nj.”
So how can you start improving your search engine ranking? Well, it is important to realize that search engine optimization will not and cannot happen overnight. You can’t expect to just add a few keywords onto your web page and then wake up the next morning to find that your site is suddenly ranked as number one on searches for “bakery nj.” Search engine optimization takes time (usually months). Any web marketing agency that claims otherwise is simply out to get your money.
To help you out, we’ve put together a crash course on SEO Basics 101 for you. Of course, the process involved in optimizing your web pages is no simple issue, but in general, it can be summarized in three main steps:
Three-Step SEO Plan:
- 1) Research and identify target keywords.
- 2) Embed keywords into pages within your website.
- 3) Continually review and maintain web analytics.
To read more about Step 1, please see the next post on search engine optimization.
