As soon as you put your foot into digital marketing it is nearly impossible not to hear about the term Search Engine Opmitization. In today’s digitalised and competitive market this tool has become more important than ever. So, in case you are not fully sure about how this works I will try to cover any gaps of basic knowledge in this post.
First of all, a definition:
“Search engine is a kind of software, which collects data about web sites – collected data includes the web site URL, some keywords or keyword groups that define the content of the web site, the code structure that forms the web page and also links provided on the web site.” (Yalçin, & Köse 2010)
The real purpose of SEO is to match the content on a website to what people are trying to find, enabling people to find what they are looking for. In other words, you need to make sure your goals match the goals of your visitors. Companies use SEO as a method of increasing sales by boosting their website traffic.
The process of SEO consists of the following steps:
It is a basic and very important step to work on Keyword Optimization – research, how to find the right keywords?
The main aim is to find keywords that:
- Have a high search volume
- Have low competition (smaller amount of results will mean your chances of ranking higher improve)
- The keywords are relevant to your site
A successful keyword analysis will be carried out according to the following rules:
- A strong list, which includes potential keywords, must be formed through keyword analysis,
- Links must be counted, and their target keywords must be found,
- Words, which were not tested in the keyword analysis, must be found and listed, (Yalçin, & Köse 2010).
To accomplish this a good tool is:
Google’s Search-Based Keyword Tool, which shows results based on Google searches and with an AdWords account, it will also give a list of keyword ideas customized to the site.
The following links will be useful if you want to start using SEO on your website.
How to Do an SEO Audit of Your Website
These 9 SEO Tips Are All You’ll Ever Need to Rank in Google
However, according to Sagot, Fougères & Ostrosi (2017) SEO can cause some difficulties.
- Search engine algorithms are constantly evolving to provide more relevant results. For example, two Google updates are Panda and Penguin.
- On the other hand, the results of the SEO process are uncertain due to the dynamic and evolving nature, the large number of criteria and the uncertainty of the results. If it is not supported by a tool, this high complexity will make the optimization efforts difficult for the webmaster.
Business constraints
The disadvantage of a decision support system is that it will only favor criteria according to their influence on the ranking, sometimes at the expense of the company image.
According to Sagot, Fougères & Ostrosi (2017) business constraints are:
- The working time: the more a manager allocates time for the SEO activity, the less the webmaster will be able to devote himself to other activities.
- The visual appearance change: if the visual appearance is degraded, it could have a consequence on the users’ experience. As a result from a bad experience, the users may leave the website, potentially causing a client loss.
- The efficiency: It defines the relationship between the two previous constraints. For example, when the webmaster spends a lot of time on SEO optimization and alters a lot the visual appearance of the webpages, the efficiency will be poor.
References:
Berman, R. & Katona, Z. 2013, “The Role of Search Engine Optimization in Search Marketing”, Marketing Science, vol. 32, no. 4, pp. 644-651.
Egri, G. & Bayrak, C. 2014, “The Role of Search Engine Optimization on Keeping the User on the Site”, Procedia Computer Science, vol. 36, pp. 335-342.
Sagot, S., Fougères, A.J & Ostrosi, E. (2017) Business Constraints Integration in a Search Engine Optimization Fuzzy Decision Support System, 2017 IEEE 19th Conference on Business Informatics.
Yalçın, N. & Köse, U. (2010), “What is search engine optimization: SEO?”, Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, vol. 9, pp. 487-493.