If you’re like many of the people out there who have heard of search engine optimisation (SEO) and would love to implement the strategy for your company, but don’t have the foggiest idea where to start, you are at the right place.

What is SEO?

So, in order to browse the internet for the data we are after the easiest format is to use a search engine, most of us will be using Google or something similar to carry out this function. 93% of internet traffic is controlled by a search engine. ( Egri,2014) , the search engines will gather related data on the subject you searched for and place it in the search engine list according to how relevant and useful it thinks those websites will be for your search.(Yalcin,2010) Its been established that most people wont look past the first 5 search result pages , therefore its really important to understand how to place your website on the first page in the search engines results to gain a competitive advantage (Egri,2014), this is where search engine optimisation comes in.

SEO is a way of optimising your website in order to gain higher and better related rankings in a search engine. It will in turn hopefully provide your website with an increase in precisely targeted traffic.(Mavridis,2015)

If your still feeling slightly clueless on what SEO is , i recommend watching the below video, it explains the strategy in a fun and simple way to understand.

How to use SEO? 

Search Engine Optimisation can be used for your business website down to your sisters blog, its just a way of thinking what are your target audience searching for and how to help them find it on your website!?

The above is a proposed SEO process , it may look confusing now but once you’ve cracked the basics your on your way!

Here are some beginning starting points to get the ball rolling:

1.  Carefully select accurate keywords – Try and get into the mind of your viewer and think what would be the words they are most likely to search for. Don’t put random keywords you think could help, as that will attract people who could be looking for something completely different , and if people are being brought to your sight for the wrong reason, it will dis-encourage trust within your site and increase your websites bounce rate. A good way to start assessing what are the best keyword to use in your content is to use Google Adwords Keyword Tool.
2. Improve navigation through your site – Create strong internal linking and easy navigation through your website so viewers can easily find the content their looking for and dont surpass your website without giving it a chance. Google suggests planning out what route the viewer would take from the homepage and making sure you have enough linking pages dedicated to the content they will be searching for.
3. Provide unique quality content – create compelling content, if a viewer thinks its interesting they will more likely share it with their friends, either on social networking sites such as Facebook/Twitter or through blogs. This is a good way of increasing your search rankings as well, as the more shares and interest an article or website has to it the more Google will acknowledge it as something people will want to read.
4. Get linking – if possible try and reach out to influential bloggers etc and get them to provide good commentary about your website and provide a link for people to use, by obtaining inbound links it will promote your place in the rankings as Google will be able to tell that you are a reliable and resourceful site. Reciprocal links are a way of benefiting your website as well as someone else’s, it involves both providing links to one anthers sites on your page.

So once you’ve implemented your SEO strategy , your gunna want to check to see if youve increased traffic to your website and kept your viewers on your website for longer!

One method of doing this is through Google Analytic’s Tool .

I hope you’re now feeling more confident towards search engine optimisation , i would give you some examples of companies doing it well , but to be honest just look at the top of every search results , you will immediately see all the big names right at the top , quite frankly we should be looking at who isn’t using SEO now!!??

References 

Egri,G. (2014). The Role of Search Engine Optimization on Keeping the User on the Site. Computer science. 36 (2), 335-342

Mavridis,T. (2015). Identifying valid search engine ranking factors in a Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 context for building efficient SEO mechanisms.Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence. 41 (1), 75-91.

Yalcin,N. (2010). What is search engine optimization: SEO?. Social and Behavioural sciences. 9 (4), 487-493