Search Engine Optimization

Getting Your Website Found on Google

Think about your business website. You know that customers can find it by typing your company name into a search engine like Google. But what about new, potential customers? How do they find you if they don’t know your company exists? Usually, they’ll type a phrase or question related to what they’re looking for in their favorite search engine and click on the first couple of links they see. This is where search engine optimization comes in.

Simply put, search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of ensuring a website can be found on search engines when someone searches for terms and phrases related to what the site has to offer. It could be said that it’s how search engines direct traffic to your website. All the major search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo use SEO to determine what web pages appear when someone searches for them and how those results are ranked. This is different from paid search ads, which involves paying money to corporations like Google to feature your website as an advertisement. SEO is about creating website content that will generate free traffic to your website from any search engine your potential customers might use.

Why does SEO matter?

This may seem like a bunch of technical gobbledygook, but SEO directly affects how your website is ranked by search engines. A site with content that isn’t SEO-friendly will appear low on a list of hundreds or thousands of search results, which makes it considerably less likely to be found by potential customers. If customers can’t find your website, you’re missing out on business.

What do I need to know about SEO?

Regardless of whether or not you created your own website, it’s important to understand how SEO works so you can generate content that uses the types of terms and phrases people will search for. Understand what kind of information your potential customers are looking for. And ask yourself if your content is meaningful and of quality. If the answer is no or you’re not sure, consider hiring a professional web developer to build a website for your company with good SEO or to improve the site you already have.

It’s important to remember that SEO is a process, which means it is a constant part of maintaining your website. Site content needs to be updated regularly in order to achieve a good ranking in search results. No matter how you and your web developer choose to generate worthwhile content for your site, it needs to be done often to be effective in the long-term.

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