TrueInsight Newsletter

Of all the buzzwords in Internet marketing, few are as buzzed about as SEO, or search engine optimization. Even if you don’t know your HTML from your HTTP, you’ve probably still heard of SEO—and how your business better get on board, or risk becoming a business dinosaur.

So what exactly is SEO—and is it really essential for every business? TruePresence is here to cut through the hype and help you figure out if it’s right for yours.

What is SEO?
SEO refers to the process of structuring and creating content to help your website appear as highly as possible in all relevant “natural” keyword search results. According to a recent Penn State study, 54 percent of users review only the first page of search results, and 19 percent stop after the second page. So when done well, SEO can be the holy grail of Internet marketing (emphasis on the words “done well.”)

But before you go chasing after that Holy Grail, there are three elements of SEO that are wise to remember—professional expertise, popularity, and—most of all—patience.

Professional Expertise
It’s a common misperception that SEO simply involves throwing keywords into your website to see what sticks. In reality, SEO is a complex blend of art and science that requires you to know how to:

• Target a select group of keywords that both your audience and the search engine algorithms will respond to. Too often, do-it-yourself SEO gets hampered by industry insider keywords that no real-world user would ever search for.
• Weave your keywords strategically throughout your site in a way that gives the content focus, density and prominence—the three “must-haves” of SEO copywriting.
• Develop the more technical elements of SEO—like meta tags, page titles, links, and navigation.

If you find yourself saying “huh?” to any of these steps (and most people do), it’s best to hand your SEO process over to a professional expert.

Popularity
Aside from your site’s content, search engines are also going to take into account your site’s popularity. The search engines figure that if your site is getting a lot of traffic, it must be relevant to its users. The primary way search engines measure popularity is through links. A link from Site XYZ to your site is considered a “vote” by Site XYZ for your site. But the importance of the Site XYZ is also a factor. As Google explains it, “votes cast by pages that are themselves ‘important’ weigh more heavily and help to make other pages ‘important.’”

Link building is an essential part of any SEO strategy, but let’s face it—it’s far easier for national and international brands to get the traffic and links required to build site popularity. Even if their site is perfectly search engine optimized, The Burger Barn in Gary, Indiana just isn’t going to get the same kind of global site traffic—or the same kind of SEO results—as Burger King, pure and simple.

Patience
SEO can get really frustrating. You’re at the mercy of ever-changing algorithms and there’s no guarantee you’ll ever see results. Even if you have a great chance of success, be prepared to wait; a change in your rankings can take months—even a year—to appear, and you may even go down in rankings at first. But if it works, the highly qualified traffic it can deliver to your site will be well worth the wait.

Take Advantage of the Alternatives
If your business doesn’t have the budget, the brand popularity, or the time that SEO requires, there are several search marketing alternatives that can still deliver traffic—often even higher quality traffic—your way. Consider a local SEO solution, like TruePresence’s Local Search Enhancement. TruePresence Local Search Enhancement increases the likelihood of appearing in the local search results for your market by creating or enhancing your business’s online profile—the profile that the web’s largest search engines, online directories and industry specific portals use to serve up their results.

And if you’re not already doing paid search, get on board. Paid search gives you far greater control over your search marketing results: you can bid on as many keywords as you like, control your position in the results by increasing or decreasing your keyword bids, and geo-target your ads down to the specific zip codes you want to reach. The results are immediate and campaigns can be analyzed and adjusted in real-time. And even though it is paid advertising, paid search is typically a fraction of the cost of print, radio, and TV advertising.

And if you’re still not sure which search marketing tools are right for you, talk to an Internet marketing consultant. There are countless Internet users out there looking for your exact products or services right now—and you don’t want to lose your chance to do business with them.