IBD stated that with search engines becoming a bigger source of web traffic - how many times do people ‘Google’ something every day - companies are more interested in getting that traffic.
Many of the larger (Fortune 500 size) companies are doing both. Recently, these bigger companies have increased their SEO efforts after seeing the benefits their website gets back. Small and medium size companies can compete in the same markets as large companies if they do their SEO work correctly, and target the right search terms (keywords).
The free side of search is the organic, or natural, search results that are returned when people type their search words into Google and other search engines, and it really is valuable traffic. Many people will only look at those results - not at the paid ads that appear down the right side of the page and a couple at the top on the left. Under the ads at the top on the left side are the organic search results. In order to rank well in the natural results, your search engine web marketing needs to be optimized for the search engines so that they reward it with a high ranking.
The art of SEO involves finding the right keywords to target for search engine web marketing efforts, and then designing the site so that search engines will not only find it but reward it with a top ranking. In addition, there are SEO strategies and good old fashioned ‘work’ to do on the website that will help its perceived value to the search engine rises. IBD stated that the competition is very intense and not many companies will share their SEO strategies because of that. One way that I have learned to be able to rise above the competition is in the keyword research area.
If website owners are not able to get to the top few spots on the first page of a search engine for their keywords, they are most probably targeting the same keywords as too many other websites in their search engine web marketing endeavors. In some markets, the majority of websites are using the same keywords. They can’t all rank on the first page of Google. Every market has what we call money keywords, or profitable keywords. These are words or phrases that get significant searches every month, but don’t have as many websites already targeting them. With some SEO work, website owners can rank quickly for these money keywords and start to see lots more traffic come to their website.
The IBD article talked about the long term benefits of SEO. If a company stops their ads today, the ad goes down and no additional traffic can go to the website from that point on. This type of search engine web marketing is gone until the company decides to start paying for the ad again.
In contrast, SEO work that includes good content on the website, and on other websites that link back to the original website, is information that will be up on the search engines for a long time to come. The benefits from this type of search engine web marketing work you do for your website today will continue to pay off for years down the road. With SEO, there is more up-front work and cost in getting the work done, but with long term benefits. And it all centers around keyword, terms, or phrases.
IBD states that, “If a company depends on Web traffic for sales, you can bet it’s using search-engine optimization, or SEO, to boost its search ranking.” Some brands do not sell from their websites, but for those of us that do want to do more business from our websites, the time is now to put an SEO plan together and work that plan consistently. It is worth the time and effort for your search engine web marketing, even if you must outsource the basic keyword research if you don’t know how to do it thoroughly or are not getting any traffic to your website with your existing keywords.
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