Sunday, November 28, 2010

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Why it is Important

By Kenny Marcum


If you know anything about online marketing you know the importance of search engines - especially Google. For the last number of years Google has dominated the online search field. You cannot possibly be serious about online marketing unless you spend time getting ranked in Google. There are other search engines such as Bing, but for the purposes of explaining how the search engines work I will use "Google" to cover all of them.

Search Engine Marketing or SEM is the practice of trying to get the search engines to drive traffic to your website(s). You can help to drive traffic to your website by increasing your ranking on Google. What does it mean to get "ranked" by Google? Getting "ranked" means that when people are searching for a specific "keyword" or "term" your website will pop up in the recommended results. The main goal is to get your website ranked on the first page of Google's results, preferably in one of the top positions.

Extensive research has shown that the first few sites listed on the Google results page get the vast majority of the clicks. And clicks mean traffic. There are several effective strategies for getting ranked. The top two strategies are Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Link Building. Other strategies include email list building and incorporating video(s) into social networking sites such as YouTube and especially Facebook.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the first of the two main strategies that are used in getting your website a top ranked position. Search Engine Optimization is the process of selecting the most promising as well as most relevant keywords then making sure that those keywords show up in your website's content in the most important places. Building inbound links or "link building" is the process of getting outside links to point to the content on your website. Link building is extremely important because inbound links are considered "votes" by other publishers and bloggers that your content is worth viewing.

The more your content focuses on your primary keywords and the more inbound links you have to your website the better your website will be ranked in the search engines. Since these strategies typically take a lot of time, effort and specialized knowledge it can be in your company's best interest to use an outside source such as a certified internet marketing firm to maintain your high search engine position results instead of trying to do it on your own.




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