What is Search Engine Optimisation - A beginners guide.
by Brian Cotsen

In this 3 part article we take a look at:

• What search engine optimisation is.
• Why it is so important to you as a business.
• The most important things you need to think about in order to improve your website's search engine positioning.

 

 

 

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What is Search Engine Optimisation? part 1 0f 3

You know many website advisors and websites that set themselves up to offer you advice about the internet make a big assumption that everyone knows what they are talking about when they say Search Engine Optimisation.

 

Well I'm not going to make that same mistake

 

If you're new to the internet you probably have lots of questions about websites and how to make them work. So to answer the question.

What is search engine optimisation?

Search engine optimisation is process of achieving a top or near to top position in the search results when someone is searching for your business, your services, your product or information that you may have on your website.

What is important to understand is that you don't need to know everything about the internet to learn how to optimise your site. This section is designed to give you the knowledge you need to better understand what you need to do to improve your website's performance in the search engines.

Let's start off by giving you a good analogy of what search engine optimisation is, SEO for short.

Imagine that you've got a music band and you want to make it big in the world of music.

What are you going to do?

I'm going to make the big assumption here that you've:

• Already formed a band.
• Written some songs.
• People like what you play.

Ok so how are you going to get yourself known and begin to promote your band and build up a following.... and make lots of money?

Well you have two choices:

• Do the promotion work yourself - play gigs in small venues, print flyers & give them out, plug the band to everyone you can think of in the music industry, get yourself a 'Youtube' spot etc
• Employ a marketing company that, hopefully, knows all about the music industry and can help you to promote your band and it's music.

You can probably tell here that I haven't got a clue about music promotion... but you get the analogy.

Now for most young bands the second option isn't really a viable one as they don't have the sort of money that it would require to make it work.

So you're left with option 1 - do it the hard way.

Now:

• You know your band is great.
• You know that you play fantastic music.
• You know you're cute and that people will like watching you.
  

 

How do you tell the world and get them to buy your music?

Well this analogy is a lot like promoting your website.

Many businesses either build or have built for them, a website that is going to help them do what ever it is they do - 'Sell', 'Inform', 'Promote their services' etc.

It's all very well having an attractive and funky website but if no one visits it then the whole thing is a bit of a waste of time & money. So you need to get people visiting the website don't you.

Back to the band - in your effort to get yourself seen and heard (like your website) you submit demo tracks to all the big music companies in the hope that the right person will receive your demos, listen, like it and ask you to come and audition.

But is isn't as simple as all that, is it?

It's not just a case of randomly picking a music company and sending in the demo CD.

Not only do you need to have a good product, or at least one that could be molded into a good product. You need to offer those big music companies something that they would feel confident promoting to their customers .... all those people you want to hear your music.

You see no music company wants to take on a band that may be a disaster in the popularity stakes. They have their reputation and their shareholders to think of.

Search engines think in exactly this way.

 

Search engines exist to satisfy their customers needs.
Never forget this.

 

Search engines have their reputation and business to think about and only want to give their customers a great experience.

Who is their customer?

You might think that it is you, as you're the one with the website, but you'd be wrong if you thought that.

The customer, in the search engines eyes, are those people who use them to find something, like you and I do every day.

Customers, to the search engines, search by going to the search box and typing in some words and hitting the 'search' button. They aren't just the search engines customers, they're your customers too.

 

Search engines want to promote ONLY the best websites to their customers... and you want your website to be the one that they promote!

Search engines, like those music companies, want to promote the best websites and list them at the top of the search results for their customers. They know that if they always return good websites to their customers 'search' then the customer will be pleased and come back to them again.

Where does Search Engine Optimisation come into all of this?

Like listening to the music, seeing what the band look like and how they perform, gives the music promotion company information to judge whether your band is worth taking notice of, search engines read your website and decide whether it is worth promoting, or rather putting at the top of the search results.

If you're worth promoting .... then you could make it to the top and be number one on Google. If they think you're not worth promoting or don't give your website any value then you may never appear in the search results.

Appearing in the search results can put you in front of hundreds of millions of pairs of eyes. Just think about how much that is worth in marketing terms.

Put simply Search Engine Optimisation is all about building or improving your website so that when someone does a search in Google, Yahoo, MSN or any of the search engines, your website is in top or close to top position.

In the next part of this article we look a little more closely at what it is that you need to think about doing to make your website more attractive to those search engines.

What is search engine optimisation part two>>>

Want some help with your search engine optimisation? Take a look at our website consultation services or take a look at the reviews of search engine optimisation tools and books to help you optimise your own website

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Article copyright Brian Cotsen - www.simplewebsitemarketing.com 2007