So, you’ve heard all about SEO and you know your site needs it. There’s just one problem - no one’s ever explained it! It can be hard to pick the good information out from the bad, since there’s so much talk about SEO, or search engine optimization. If you want to know what it is, why you should do it, and what the downsides are, read on.

Search engine optimization is just what it says - making your site one that’s put together optimally for the search engines. However, not all engines are targeted equally. Most people are primarily concerned with Google. That’s because Google has the most complex algorithms for determining page rank, and it’s still the number one search engine.

The benefits of optimizing your site correctly include traffic you don’t have to pay for and good branding for your company. That’s because if you turn up higher in searches than others, you’ll be perceived as one of the leaders in your field. The downsides of SEO? It takes time and energy to do, and results can take a little while to appear.

SEO is an extremely useful tool for many businesses. However, each business is different, and depending on how yours is set up and where you’re selling, it may not pay for it to be your primary marketing focuses. Companies that are focusing on sales over a wider area, for instance, get a higher return on their initial investments. If you sell mostly locally, SEO is still useful, but it might not be best as your primary marketing channel. That’s because fewer people look online for services or products in their immediate area.

If SEO is so useful, how do you do it? There are some major points to pay attention to. One of the first ones is making sure you have an easily navigable, understandable site. That means that you need to have pages well planned out and thoroughly crosslinked to one another, with clear page titles. Humans and search engines should both be able to tell what page they’re on without having to think about it.

Another one that we often forget about when producing pages for people is including important keywords in the text, internal links, and meta information of our pages. To do this well, first get a clear picture of the phrases or words that would bring the right kind of visitor to your site.

Imagine what those visitors will need to do on your site once they get there. Think about how your audience prefers to navigate and what they’re likely to be looking for. That’ll give you the terms that will bring in visitors who are looking for what you have to offer.

To truly be optimized, your site must be put together correctly. That means using clean, uncluttered HTML that’s up to the current standard. This is important because it creates a site that the search engines can index and read easily. This produces the best results in the long run, and is the basis for an SEO campaign that really works. You want a page that loads quickly and has a really accessible structure.

One thing to remember is that while humans can see Flash content, video and images, search engines can’t. All they see is text. They’re concerned about what that text is, where it’s located on the site, and what it’s linked to. That means that you need to put the most important information in the main pages of your site, and use structural elements like headers and paragraph tags to tell the search engine what’s most important. Setting up your site “correctly” according to HTML rules isn’t optional - it’s vital.

There are some offsite factors that’ll affect how you rank, too. Search engines pay attention to the popularity of your site with others. If you have incoming links from sites that they consider to be relevant to the search term, you’ll be ranked more highly. They also pay attention to the reputation of these sites.

Engaging in what are called “black hat” SEO practices - lying to search engines, keyword stuffing, and other behaviors that are frowned upon - can get a site marked as unreliable. If you’re associated with one of these sites, your ranking can go down. That’s why it’s so important to pay attention to the quality of your backlinks.

If you take some time to put your site together properly, with the needs of search engines in mind, you’ll have a much better chance of getting the quality traffic you need. If you own a website, you should be concerned about SEO. Learn more about it today.

About the Author



John Tanner is a marketing consultant and founder of VAR
Strategy. 
After a career in military intelligence John helped grow businesses in various
industries through sales and marketing, eventually finding a passion for
challenges and opportunities for business development in the IT channels.

VAR Strategy is a product of this passion and was created to provide
helpful information and resources to assist VAR's in growing their businesses. 

Visit his blog and signup free to get tested marketing and business
development strategies by email, along with blog updates, news, and more! Go now
to http://www.VARStrategy.