The Importance Of Search Engine Optimisation

October 9th, 2009 | Search Engine Optimisation

It has been widely reported in the media about the growth in expenditure on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) worldwide during the recession of 2008 – 2009 yet this growth has been against a backdrop of falling advertising spending for traditional media such as newspapers and television. Why?

Eye Tracking SEO of a website leads to more visibility in the major search engines such as Google and Yahoo. In other words a well optimised site will benefit from higher rankings when users search using relevant key terms.

Users are searching for over 300 million search queries per day using Google alone. Many of these searches (I’ve heard it estimated at 40% of all searches) are for products and services that someone wants to purchase. The truth is that most people only look at the organic search results (these come from having a high natural ranking through good SEO) on pages one, sometimes two and occasionally three together with paid search results from Pay Per Click (PPC). Have a look at picture which shows where people click with the red being the most click areas – highlights the importance of being near the top!

The challenge is to therefore try and get on to the first page for all the major search queries that your customers might search using and stay there bearing in mind there may well be thousands of other businesses doing the same thing. The investment is well worth it with over 1.5 billion users worldwide and 50% of them searching the web using a search engine every day!

Google, Yahoo and MSN account for 90%+ of all searches made with Google taking the lions share. Our own research and experience has highlighted the following important facts:

80% of searches use only the first three pages or 30 results;
70% of users prefer natural search results to paid results;
50% of buyers online rely on a search engine when looking to make a purchase.

So what does this mean to you?

Your business must get towards the top of search engines for as many relevant terms as possible not only in order to grow your business but also now to survive as competition becomes fiercer.

How can you do this?

Search Engine Optimisation encompasses two key factors:

On Page Optimisation – including content, body text and tags;
Off Page Optimisation – including inbound links, anchor text, PageRank and authority.

There are a lot of criteria that determine your ranking especially with Google. The main goal of SEO is to positively influence search engine’s relevance algorithm. The algorithms used change frequently as search engines strive to make sure users get the most relevant search results. Currently, some of the key determinants include keyword relevance included in title tags and text body as well as quality and quantity of inbound links.

Staying on top of what is required is a difficult and time consuming business largely due to the complexity of what is required together with the changing nature of search engines and all the competitors vying for higher spot around you.

A strategy to improve your ranking in the major search engines would include:

Extensive key word and key phrase research;
Competitor research and analysis;
On page optimisation adjustments;
Optimisation of copywriting;
Title adjustments;
Tag adjustments;
Optimising internal link structure;
Usability and navigation optimisation;
Analysing inbound linking;
Building links regularly with directory submission, article and press release writing;
Social Bookmarking;
Syndication and socialisation of content with media and RSS feeds;
Blogging regularly;
Increasing site’s authority.