You can’t have a website these days without hearing the acronym SEO from just about every marketing professional you talk to. The term stands for Search Engine Optimization and covers a broad spectrum of techniques used to influence the ranking of a page on the major search engines. Top rankings can bring in more client inquires equaling big bucks.

Why SEO?

The term SEO doesn’t just mean optimizing your site for top rankings in the major search engines. A basic SEO plan maybe, but a serious marketing campaign reaches potential clients with unique content, social media marketing, photos, videos and creative thinking. Any level of optimization is better than none because having your business found is key to increasing inquires and sales on the web.

How is SEO achieved?

• Keyword research

Search engine optimization is achieved by targeting keywords that you believe potential visitors will be typing into search engines to find products or services related to the page being optimized. An SEO expert uses special tools on that analyze search data and make it easier to find relevant keywords with a high search volume. Every page on a site is about something different and should have keywords that are relevant to the content of the page.

• Optimizing your site

One thing you need to know about search engines is that they don’t rank websites, they rank the individual pages of a website by “on-page” and “off-page” factors. There is much debate as to whether on-page factors are more important than off-page factors. The key issue is that both on and off page factors are essential to a successful SEO campaign – regardless of which you believe is more important.

On-page factors are anything that resides on the page, including text content, links, and the underlying code. The text content of a page can be the deciding factor in its ranking. When optimizing a page, make sure to have keywords that are relevant to the content of the page, meta, title, h1, <b>, and <i> tags. When search engine crawlers reach a page they read the content like a newspaper, looking at the headings first then the content, paying special attention to words in bold or italics.

• Linking

Off-page factors are techniques used to receive links back to your site that include search engine submission, directory listings, blogging, social networking and press releases. Search engines, specifically Google, use these factors to weigh the popularity of a site and use it as the basis of a page’s “Page Rank.”

Search engines love blogs and press releases; they are full of content. When you write a blog not only are you becoming a voice in your industry, you are establishing a repository of credible content that links back to your site. A reader may link to your blog and that link may be followed by another visitor on the reader’s site.

Linking can be a very powerful tool in your SEO tool bag. When optimizing your site, consider other relevant businesses and organizations that you can request to link to your site. Receiving links from a few popular sites may be all that a page needs to achieve a higher ranking.

• Analysis and re-optimization

The content of a page and density of keywords residing in the content may need to be analyzed and updated periodically before any results are achieved. Any SEO expert will tell you that optimization can take anywhere from 6 to 9 months. Bute note: optimizationcan take 6 to 9 months, but it will not necessarily take that long. It is possible for a page to rank much quicker. A variety of factors - including the popularity and competition of a specific keyword or phrase - influence the time a page takes to rank.

Is SEO right for my business?

Search engine optimization is not a magic formula for getting new inquires or clients. It requires as much research and analysis as traditional methods of marketing. If the proper time and devotion is given to an SEO campaign results will follow. Visibility is everything: if you put yourself out there, they will come.

I cannot say that SEO is for every business. If your business is primarily online then you probably can’t get away without doing some SEO. If your business is land-based you may get plenty of clients from local advertisements and referrals. Expanding your business to the internet however, has many benefits. For instance when was the last time you looked up anything in the Yellow Pages?

Google, anyone?