Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving the quantity and volume of traffic/visitors to a site in the web from search engines through algorithmic search results. This is known as organic SEO and should be a part of your overall integrated marketing strategy.
Logically, the higher a site is ranked or the faster a site is presented in search engines the higher the chances of being clicked on by users and the more visitors it will receive. This inevitably should lead to sales if the content on the site is well structured and speaks clearly to the intended target audience.
SEO targets many areas such as local searches, industry-specific vertical searches, regional, countrywide such as SEO Thailand, continental as well as global searches. For a local business, SEO is always going to be worthwhile because it is not going to cost an arm and a leg to get decent results.
Local SEO is Still Very Much Worthwhile
It is worth remembering that SEO is not just about having your website as high up in the search results as possible, which is referred to as visibility. SEO is also about helping your customers find your brand or location. You can search, for instance, SEO Bangkok here and see what comes up. This is an SEO company looking to appeal to people seeking an SEO company in Bangkok, Thailand.
For example, if I knew the name of the local restaurant someone recommended, but I am not 100% sure where it is and what its opening hours are, the best place to look is Google Maps or Bing Maps.
Both these search tools will give the information I need at a glance if the restaurant in question has set up their maps correctly. I can even get directions to drive there!
Also being listed in local directories that people use to search for businesses should also be considered. For instance, I may also decide to look in the local directory for the restaurant. This would be White Pages or Yellow Pages. Therefore, it is important that the restaurant’s internet marketing team have the business listed here.
In addition to this, the restaurant may think about making sure their website is visible on popular industry specific websites. An instance of this would be Tripadvisor’s restaurant’s section or a website that reviews restaurants.
In short, the picture being built here is one that basically gives the restaurant’s website every chance of exposure. The next step would be having the restaurant perform well because many of these websites have a review section.
Having good reviews is very important not just because the restaurant wants to stand out, but also because all the websites that it is listed to have their own internal SEO. Being top will also give the restaurant the best chance of being chosen among the options presented to the person searching the site.
SEO Marketing Strategy Explained
SEO marketing may involve how a site is presented, its structure, coding and how to fix problems that may prevent search engine indexing programs from fully discovering a site. Going back to local SEO, one of the secrets to many websites ranking locally without any links is schema. This is something that every website should look into nowadays because Google, in particular, is one search engine that is putting heavy emphasis on this.
Addition effort put in place to enhance site discovery include ensuring that site content is easily indexed by search engines and making the website more appealing to its users.
Marketing may be customized to a number of search types. Different companies may consider increasing their visibility in music or video searches and others may prefer their presence on image or data searches.
Optimizing On-Page SEO Content and Technical Aspects
In order to optimize a company’s site to achieve higher rankings in search engines, editing and modification of the HTML code and website content is nearly always required. Most web designers are not SEO savvy even when they think they are. They may design a superb website, but once the site has been completed and an SEO takes over from this point, there is nearly always a good few hours more work that will need doing.
Sometimes the difficult part to this is balancing SEO with user experience, which is where there is often a clash between the web designer SEO specialist. At the end of the getting more traffic is nearly always more important than having a fancy gimmick that slows down the website and negatively affects its rankings. There is always a good workaround that is SEO friendly, and in my opinion, this should always be a priority.
Adding specific keywords on the site is a way to take advantage of how search engine robots scan your site for relevance.
SEO Techniques Used
Techniques used can be broadly categorized into two main areas.
These are techniques recommended by search engines as part of good design versus techniques that are not approved by search engines. This is known as White hat SEO and Blackhat SEO respectively.
- White hat SEO
This is a technique that conforms to search engine guidelines and does not involve any deception. This technique does not just involve following guidelines but also ensuring that the content in a site is the same as a search engine’s indexes and ranks. White hat technique generally sums up to creating content for users and not for search engines and also making the content visible and easily accessible rather than trying to play the algorithm from its intended use.
White hat SEO is not so different from web development in that it promotes accessibility. White hat techniques include quality content, titles containing metadata, keyword research and effective use of keywords, use of structural/semantic markup and separate content from presentation and having quality inbound links.
Advantages of White hat SEO
- It helps to build excitement and relations
- The tactic carries less legal dangers
- The tactic legitimately helps to build multiple revenue streams
- Blackhat SEO
This technique improves site rankings through deception. A black hat technique may use hidden text by having it colored same as the background of the website in an invisible manner or by positioning it off screen.
Black hat techniques break search engine rules and do not follow regulations by creating poor user experiences and by unethically presenting content in non-visual or different visual way to search engine users. Search engines occasionally penalize sites using black hat technique by either reducing their rankings or even eliminating the sites’ listings from their databases.
SEO is Still Worth It
Even if your website is in a competitive marketplace and AdWords seems like the only option, SEO is still worth performing. You don’t necessarily have to build links per say in this case. Use a PR company to circulate content, join industry-specific sites and get customers to leave reviews, add schema to your website and (although we didn’t mention it) use Social Media to get the word out. Lastly, if you are targeting local SEO, then now is the time to get an SEO company to help you with this because at the moment many local SEO marketplaces are still not too saturated.
