subject: What is Search Engine Optimisation? [print this page] Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an internet marketing strategy that considers how search engines work and which keywords people search for. It is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via organic search results. And the higher a site appears in the results list, the more visitors it will receive from the engine.Think about how you find information. Probably from typing it into Google right? And then think about how many results pages you are willing to go through before you give up? Probably not more then three right? Therefore, if a brand is hoping to increase visitors to their site organically, they'd better find themselves high up on Google (or other search engines).There are a number of ways to optimise a website. For starters the site itself can input keywords into its header and body text. The trick to doing this well is to hide the keyword. Web writers must remember that they have two audiences, search engines and people. Content that is picked up by search engines isn't necessarily interesting for readers, and there's no point in optimising your site if readers want to hit the back button as soon as they arrive. Embedding keyword phrases into copy in an unobvious way requires a lot of thought.Another way to perform SEO is by backlinking or cross linking. Backlinks are incoming links to a website/page. This means that they have been listed on another site- usually in an effort to find new visitors. One way to backlink is to write articles for web distribution which include an anchor text with a link to your site. Another method is commenting or posting content in publicly shared spaces, such as social media platforms. Examples of this are commenting on someone's blog or leaving your URL in a Tweet. Cross linking is when one web page links to another (usually more targeted) web page on the same site.While SEO does have the ability to generate a significant return on investment, it is not necessarily an appropriate marketing tool for every company. If a brand should decide that SEO is right for them, it is advisable that they hire an internet marketing agency to handle the work load for them, as it is quite heavy. Moreover, the agency will have specialists who are well versed in search engine analytics and keyword research.
