SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is the process of making your website search engine friendly by designing your website for both search engines and humans. In other words, it is the balance between the two.
When you first develop your site you are trying to attract one group of users: search engines. If you cater to search engines, you are also catering to users who are not search engines, and are not as willing to buy if your site is not relevant to their search terms. I will refer to these users as Humans. When you cater to both search engines and humans, you are doing the most effective SEO for your website.
Search Engine Optimisation Techniques
* On Page Optimisation – this refers to changes that you make on your website that direct search engines towards your pages. You want your site to be ranked for the correct keywords, but you also want it to be viewed by humans.
* Off Page Optimisation – this refers to changes that you make on your website that direct search engines away from your pages. You want your site to be ranked for the wrong keywords, and you also want it to be viewed by humans.
* Keyword Research – selecting the right keywords is one of the most difficult parts of search engine optimisation. You want a keyword to be the best phrase to be searched by users, but you also want a phrase to be too popular that will drive people away from your website. There are tools available that can help you find these tools are Google Ad Words, Keyword Discovery and Wordtracker. There are also tools available that can help you find the keywords.
* Content Optimisation – this is the process of structuring your website content so that the search engines love your site and the users love it. Content is critical, and you want your site to be seen in the first three search engine results pages, and in the first five search engine results pages.
* PPC Campaigns – You want to enable your visitors to buy from your site, and pay you, and enable you to enable your visitors to buy from your site and pay you, and enable you to enable your visitors to buy from your site.
It is not a mistake that Google have the most users, and Yahoo the most advertising revenue. Google have the most users because they have the most paid traffic generated from a search engine. Google pay money to their users, and they see their users as customers. Yahoo are at the bottom, because they do not have as much paying customers, their visitors as their customers are simply visitors. They are not really considered as customers.
So if you want to build your reputation as an SEO professional, you have to take into consideration that you have to have more paying customers than your competitors, and your visitors as your customers are seen as your customers by search engines. Google Ad words provides a service for your customers to buy from your site, and you want to enable them to buy from your site. Google also want your site to be visible in their search engine listings, and Yahoo want their search engine to show their links.
What is your site about? – Your site is about some subject, but you are not sure if your visitors are about the subject you are about to write about.
Who is your audience? – You cannot be sure what kind of visitors are on your site. They might be a lot of different kind of visitors.
Where do your visitors come from? – Your site visitors might come from many different places. Some of your visitors might be from your web site, newsletters, blog articles, direct clicks of your classified ad, affiliate marketing, etc.
What do your visitors want? – You cannot really know what your visitors want, but you can come up with some ideas. For example, you may want to sell products, and your visitors may buy products, or you may want to promote causes and your visitors may do some petition. You may want to read something, and your visitors might want to donate some money.
How do your visitors get to your site? – You cannot be sure how your visitors get to your site. Maybe they are searching for keywords on Google, and somebody clicks on your classified ad, or they are signed up in your opt-in newsletter, or they found you in your social network. What you can do, is to put an extra step in between you and your visitors. This extra step, is a login, or a checkout process. These steps will try to make your visitors’ lives easy, and they will be a lot more patient when visiting your site.
