It may seem like a bit of a strange marketing strategy. Mostly because SEO doesn’t actively go out and engage with the wider public, in fact much of what is done is entirely invisible; lying beneath the surface, but far from dormant.
However, when it comes to the Internet, things are a little different to the ‘real world’. You don’t just get seen on big billboards or people walking around with ‘Golf Sale’ sandwich boards; you have to go where people are looking, you have to go to the search engines.
It might sound tenuous, it might even sound a little ridiculous, but most websites get the vast majority of their traffic through the search engines. People use them to find everything. Whether it’s to solve a mathematical equation or to buy a calculator, the search engine has become the number one resource for information, products and services.
With so much potential traffic out there, it would be madness not to try and tap into it. But to start getting your share of this constant stream of people, you need to identify how you want people to find you (i.e. for what terms) and begin optimising your website for them.
Don’t become blinded by search engine optimisation though. Whilst it’s important that you are getting your website seen and read by the search engines, don’t forget about the human visitors. Copy can become cluttered by unnecessarily high volumes of keywords within the body and headlines, so don’t get carried away.
When done in moderation and in the correct fashion, SEO can make all the difference for any website. But like all marketing tools, the advertising is only as good as the product at the end of the day. A fully optimised site may well get to the top of Google, but that won’t guarantee success, particularly if the design, content and services don’t match the lofty position.
Search engine algorithms have been improved manifold over the years, so the chances of a ‘bad ‘ website topping the rankings is far more unlikely. However, SEO shouldn’t be viewed as an alternative to good, common sense business practices. It is marketing, plain and simple. It is there to get you seen and to ensure customers come through the door and view what you have to offer.
Even though it works in a very different way to most conventional marketing strategies, its effectiveness cannot be beaten. You may want to supplement it with a little PPC advertising, which also uses many of the fundamental principles as SEO, or even social media; but ultimately, search engines are the best source of continual, free traffic online.
The effectiveness is staggering and so can be the results; which is why website owners ignore SEO at their peril.
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