SEO (search engine optimization) is a marketing tool to get preferred visitors to your website. The rules in planning and implementing SEO for your website are the same as other marketing tools you use to promote your business. The web is just like a newspaper. Your website represents your business. The goal is the same – you want maximum people to read about it, write about it, and say good things about it so that even more people know about it and come to you for their needs. The critical difference is that the web is accessed by millions more.

Web Design and Web Programming

Planning and implementing SEO does not have to be complicated. If you have good knowledge of web design and web programming, you can do it yourself. If you don’t, effective SEO consultants and specialists offer affordable solutions.

SEO starts with understanding your business and its target customers. What products/services do you provide? Who buys them? This knowledge is matched with the target customers‘ Internet behavior – what do they search for? What words, and phrases do they use to describe your products/services? What websites do they frequently visit? What forums do they write on? Whose opinion do they rely on?

Once these factors have been determined, you will need to build/redesign your website to ensure that the correct words and phrases are present in your website content. Create links to and from popular sites and post articles, news, and other information on popular forums. Submit your website to search engine directories. Furthermore, based on your business, you can implement geographic SEO principles to get local visitors who may be more likely to do business with you.

A website is a cheap and very effective marketing tool for your business and you must maximize its reach. But you cannot just create a website and think it will automatically generate more business for you. If customers cannot find your website, they cannot purchase your products/services. The goal of SEO is to place your website on or near the top of major search engine rankings so that prospective customers can easily and repeatedly find your website.

Bottom line – SEO gets more visitors to your website, leading to more prospective customers and hence more revenue for your business.