8 February 2013

SEO Search Engine Optimisation

Why SEO Is Imperative for Your Business, Online or Offline

Search engine optimisation, or SEO, is essential for helping increase your websites visibility in search engines and this is done by increasing the Alexa Ranking of your site. Although increasing your Alexa Ranking is rather easy, it can be extremely time consuming and will leave you with less time to focus on your business’s actual website. With this being said, it is strongly recommended that you hire an SEO specialist to do the work for you.

Without any search engine optimisation work being done on your website, both on-site and off-site, then the chances are your website won't be found through search engines very easily, and if your website can't be found, then this could really affect your online business in a bad way - especially if there are no other promotional techniques that you are using such as advertising or digital marketing.

Being as there are literally billions of websites online - some of which may even be offering the same products / services as you - it can prove to be rather competitive between everyone. So let's say you are selling children's toys online through your website and from typing the keywords: "Children's Toys" in to a search engine you will see that there are loads of pages with results. There will be so many results in fact that you won’t have the time to look through every single one of them. Because of these many results, your website may be on one of the very last pages but this can be changed with the help of effective SEO.

With effective search engine optimisation, work isn't just done on-site, but off-site too which means your website link will be posted on other websites, forums and wherever else is appropriate. The more links you have on Google, the better your Alexa Ranking will be and in return, this will help improve which page your website is on in the search engines.

So in conclusion, without SEO for your business, your website presence will be almost invisible and thus reducing the overall visits you get from potential customers. It can take some time for results to start showing, sometimes even months so be patient and whatever you do, stay well clear of black-hat SEO techniques. Black-hat SEO techniques are against the search engines terms and it is considered as cheating. If your website is found to be using these black-hat SEO techniques then it could end up as being flagged, or even worse, removed from the search engine results all together.

With numerous companies offering SEO marketing in London, Birmingham, Leicester and across the UK, it is important to make sure you use a reputable marketing agency that steer clear of black-hat SEO.

By Sarah-Jayne Culver