Importance of SEO

Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, is a very important aspect of the Internet that is often not taken into consideration. SEO is the optimisation of web pages so they appear high in the search engine (e.g. Google, Yahoo, MSN) rankings. The search engines will not automatically find you unless SEO has been performed on your site.

A lot of businesses put much consideration into a new website without ever thinking about Search Engine Optimisation. They often spend a lot of money on getting their website developed and end up with a nice website that they hope will generate a lot of revenue. Many of them don’t think about marketing their website though. They don’t even take SEO into consideration. If a website is not optimised for the search engines then all the time, money and effort that has gone into designing the site could go to waste.

Online there are millions of competitors from all over the world. In comparison a High Street shop only has a few competitors. The advantage of the High Street is that potential customers are only going to pass a few shops, and even fewer that are direct competition that sell similar products. The Internet, though, has the advantage that your businesses can be reached from anywhere in the world. This is one of the reasons why SEO is so important. Little or no optimisation means that your site will appear nowhere compared to the millions of competitors. Good optimisation however, can put your site towards the top of the search engine results, and therefore people searching from all over the globe can find you and use your products or services. You won’t sell anything if people can’t find you, but if they can you could be sitting on a gold mine.

One of the first things most people think about when starting a new businesses is marketing. They realise that without marketing there businesses will not be visible to the public. However, people often do not think the same way when it comes to a website. SEO is a type of marketing, and it is necessary if you want you website to be visible. There are of course other ways of marketing a website, but SEO is the most effective. Relatively few people type a website’s address directly into their browser, even if they know which company they are searching for. They will usually enter into a search engine the company name or a term related to it. And of course most people are looking for a product or service, or information and do not have a particular website in mind. Therefore it is important to be found for search terms that are related to your business.

In a way SEO can be likened to paying rent for a shop in the High Street. To get the best position in the High Street you need to pay more rent, and your web pages need to be optimised to be in the best positions in the search engines.