Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) is one of the key forms of marketing on the web. SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. The traffic that is typically generated from SEO is primarily from search engines and via "organic" or non-paid searches. The purpose of Search Engine Optimization is to get your website in the top rankings of Google (and others) search engine listing results when someone searches for your "keyword phrases". The process of SEO improves the volume and/or quality of traffic to your website through various "on-page" and "off-page" techniques.
The ultimate purpose of Search Engine Optimization is to increase your website's ranking on organic search results in various search engines. Increasing your ranking results in more traffic to your site. And who doesn't want more traffic to their site?
The Two Components of SEO
There are two components to Search Engine Optimization: "on-page" and "off-page".
On-page SEO concentrates on page content, HTML coding, META tags, and the structure of the website, such as navigation. On-page optimization techniques include content writing, title tags, several META-Tags, headlines & text decoration, image alt and page title attributes and sitemaps. Sometimes, a website's structure must be altered. That's why it's better to incoporate Search Engine Optimization when a website is first being developed, than having to retrofit it later. At Misfits Media Group, we implement on-page SEO tactics for every website we design, so our clients have a running start. But, on-page SEO is just part of the process.
Off-page optimization focuses more on your site's relationship with other websites, specifically in the area of link building. The process of link-building focuses on developing hundreds to thousands of one-way backlinks from relevant, high-quality (and high authority) websites. Off-page SEO also includes directory submissions, article writing and press releases.
Waiting For SEO
There's no doubt that SEO should be an integral part of your total Search Engine Marketing (SEM) plan. The traffic generated can be significant at little cost to you. But, Search Engine Optimization requires a lot of constant effort and it takes time until you see results. It's extremely rare to see quick results. In fact, depending on the competitiveness of the keyword phrase being optimized, it can take 3 months to a year to see the desired rankings in the search engines.
A typical SEO campaign, handled by an SEO specialist, will target 3 keywords or keyword phrases. Of course, the professional will perform a very thorough analysis to determine the best keywords to target. This analysis is crucial, because the choice of keywords will, many times, determine the success of the campaign. Of these 3 keywords, two will be at a low-mid competitive level, while the third will be a highly competitive keyword. The lower to mid-level keywords will generate less traffic but will be easier to compete on and, therefore, you'll see results faster. The high-level keyword will be highly competitive but target a massive amount of traffic and will take much longer before seeing results.
SEO link-building, specifically creating a large number of one-way backlinks, is currently the #1 technique of off-page SEO to boost your ranking. The more quality backlinks you get to your site, the more important your site appears to Google, resulting in better search engine rankings. An SEO professional should be able to create, on average, 200-500 of these backlinks monthly. As you can see, SEO is a time-consuming process and requires a lot of patience before seeing the desired results.
Is SEO Traffic Free?
Because the end result of Search Engine Optimization is higher traffic to your site from the search engines and "organic" non-paid searches, many people equate SEO with "free" traffic. Unlike Pay-Per-Click (PPC), where you pay for each visitor who clicks on your PPC ad, you're not paying anything each time someone clicks your link in the organic search results page and comes to your website. So there's no direct cost per visitor with SEO-generated traffic and, in this regard, can correctly be viewed as free traffic.
The challenge with SEO, however, is that the level of competition has become fierce. Everyone is on the internet, has a website and is competing with you. Their website, like yours, is being indexed by Google. As a result, the process of SEO has become more sophisticated and complicated. Most companies, who are serious about having SEO done correctly, will hire an SEO specialist or firm to do it for them. Some companies will even create a new position to fill to manage their SEO.
In addition to creating backlinks, some SEO professionals may also provide directory submission, article submission and press release services. Although many directories are free to submit to, their weight and influence towards increasing your ranking is so minimal that most of them are not worth bothering with. There are a number of "paid" directories, however, where there is a fee to list your website, and these directories, including Yahoo!, are high-authority sites that can definitely help in boosting your ranking. So prepare to spend upwards of $700 per year for these directories. Also, many press release services do charge a fee per submission.
As you can see, embracing SEO on a serious level typically involves hiring an SEO professional or firm to create and manage the campaigns for you. Add to that the paid directory submissions and possibly some press releases, and SEO is no longer free. But, if paying for SEO did not result in positive ROI, there wouldn't be as many SEO professionals and agencies as there are available today. The fact is that these professionals know the proven techniques to get your site to the top of the listings.
