Monday, September 13, 2010

What the Heck is SEO?





Welcome to my first post in a series on Search Engine Optimization for small business owners.

There is a lot of confusion over Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, and there are a lot of shady characters, spammers, and telemarketers in the SEO business. Unfortunately, this has resulted in many small business owners being skeptical and tuning out as soon as they hear the term “SEO”. This is a shame, and a crucial mistake from a business and marketing standpoint.

Think about it – Who are today’s consumers? Baby Boomers have completely embraced the internet and email, and are heavy users of search engines, and many younger consumers have never walked across the living room to turn the “knob” on a television set, have had a computer with internet access in their household for as long and they can remember, and have never touched the Yellow Pages. Thus, the first place today’s (and increasingly, tomorrow’s) consumers go when shopping around for a small business is an internet search engine.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the process of planning (for a new website) or revising (for an existing website), a website’s structure and content so that it adheres to the guidelines expected of the major search engines and ranks well in their search results for a particular set of search queries or “keyword phrases”. Nothing more, nothing less.

Now that we’ve clarified that, it bears mentioning just who the major search engines are. In a word, Google! Google currently enjoys about a 70% market share of online searches in the United States. Google’s only real competition is Microsoft, who recently acquired the Yahoo! search engine and is in the process of merging Yahoo! with its own search engine, known as Bing (formerly MSN Live Search). Bing (when combined with Yahoo!) now boasts a 25% market share. All other search portals (AOL, Lycos, Ask.com, etc.) have a market share in the single digits, and many serve search results that are actually from Google or Bing. Thus they really aren’t a factor when it comes to SEO.

“You really only have to worry about Google and Bing!”

So the good news is you really only have to worry about Google and Bing! Furthermore, Google and Bing tend to serve fairly similar search results, so if your site is well optimized for Google, chances are it will also rank well in Bing, and vice versa.

Being ranked highly in the search results on Google and/or Bing is one of the most powerful marketing tools available to today’s small business owners. And here’s why: Almost every other form of advertising in the world is based on what I call “Push Marketing”. In other words, you “push” your message in front of a potential customer’s eyes. Whether it’s an ad in a magazine or newspaper, a brochure or business card, or a billboard or sign, the effect is the same; The customer is usually not seeking your product or services at that
particular moment, so they are much less receptive to your message and subconsciously resent having it “pushed” on them.

"Being ranked highly in the search results on Google or Bing is one of the most powerful marketing tools available to today’s small business owners."

Search engines turn this process around 180 degrees, and use what I call “Pull Marketing” – the customer is actively searching for your product or service and is trying to “pull” your message in front of their eyes. And once they find what they’re looking for, they usually stop searching and contact the business that seems like the best fit. At that point, all of the more traditional marketing techniques apply. You have to answer the phone when it rings and be responsive and professional in e-mail messages, and you have to have a high quality product or service in order to complete the sale. But the search engine did its job and delivered the customer to your door, telephone, or inbox!

But how do you make sure your message is the one that the customer pulls?

Most people are surprised when I explain to them that Google and Bing want your site to be on the first page of their search results. Why is that? Because Google and Bing must return relevant search results in order to keep users coming back to their search engines.

"Google and Bing want your site to be on the first page of their search results!"

Let’s say your website is about Tampa Wedding Photography (and you are in fact a wedding photographer in Tampa). If I go to Google or Bing and search for “Tampa Wedding Photographer” and your site is not there, then Google and Bing have failed!

However, if I search for “Tampa Wedding Photographer” and your site is one of the top results, and I click through to your site and find exactly what I was looking for, we all win! I’m happy because I found what I needed, you’re happy because a potential new customer found your website, and Google and Bing are happy because next time I need to search for something online, I’m more likely to return to their search engine. That’s how it’s supposed to work.

But how do you let Google and Bing know that your site is about Wedding Photography in Tampa or Plumbers in Clearwater? That is exactly what this series of blog posts will teach you!

The remainder of this series will focus on teaching you what the search engines are looking for and how to optimize your website to rank on the first page of Google and Bing. Subscribe to my blog to make sure you don’t miss my next post about Title Tags!


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