Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process by which search engines find your website and rank it, increasing the amount of visitors to your website by obtaining a high rank in search engine results. It is a way for businesses to promote their brand and increase their exposure through online, industry specific content. Optimising your website for search engines is a highly recommended practice for all websites.
SEO is a major marketing tool for many businesses. It is a much cheaper option when compared to traditional forms of direct marketing (flyers, paid advertising, telemarketing).
SEO increases a businesses visibility on the web, and when implemented correctly, SEO can generate leads and sales for your website in a targeted, cost effective manner.
Tips for SEO
1. Don’t use images to display copy – Search engines can’t see images, only text.
2. Describe all images – this is what the ALT tag is used for
3. Always use appropriate page titles – use the best descriptive words in your tittle tag that relate to your page and make every page unique.
4. Write great, relevant copy – use your crucial keywords in your headings and text. Write clever and interesting text.
5. Be patient – Google is Google, no-one can guarantee you first page results.
SEO definitions and terms
Search Engine: Web site whose function is to help users find web pages on any given searched topic.
SEO: Search Engine Optimisation
Landing Page: The page your visitor lands on after clicking a link
Spider: Search engine crawlers which search the web for pages to index
Google Bot: Google’s search engine spider
CPC: Cost Per Click. Typical rate of measuring the expense involved with acquiring web traffic.
Google PageRank: is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web.
Keywords: Words that are used by search engines to determine the topic of a given web page.
Keyword Density: How often a keyword or keyword phrase is used on a given web page.
Organic Search: Search results in a search engine that are not paid advertisements. The results that come up naturally based on their indexing within a search engine. Organic search results are good.
For more information, check out Google’s own guide