What is Search Engine Optimization?
Searching is the second most commonly performed
activity of all Internet users - right behind using
e-mail. The majority of Internet users use search
engines and web directories as their primary method
to find information or resources online. However,
with approximately 4 billion web pages publicly
available on the World Wide Web, the chances are
slim that people will find your site for searches
that relate to your product or service without proper
optimization.
Search Engine Optimzation
uses knowledge and observation of exactly 'how'
search engines and web directories decide which
web sites to return as results for queries, and
applies this to attain significantly higher placement
for particular sites. SEO is the process of assisting
the search engines and directories to accurately
evaluate which search queries your web content can
answer effectively, and additionally seeks to place
a certain 'bias' in your favor for ranking your
sites within the search results for those queries.
How Important is
Search Engine Placement?
In recent studies,
top e-commerce and information web sites were discovered
to receive up to 85 percent of all of their visitors
(and customers) from search referrals. Without doubt,
for the vast majority of on-line companies, SEO
provides the highest possible ROI of all marketing
and promotional activities.
More than 80 percent
of Web users find the sites they're looking for
by using a search engine, according to both Forrester
Research and Georgia Tech's GVU Center User Surveys.
Every single day, 57 percent of Web users search
the Internet, making search the second most popular
Internet activity after e-mail (according to Statistical
Research, Inc.).
Search listings outscore
banner and button ads by more than two to one on
measures including awareness, likelihood to click-on,
and overall opinion, in a recent study by NPD Group.
The survey also found that consumers are five times
more likely to purchase your products after seeing
search listings versus banners.
Search engines drive
extremely targeted traffic. The visitor who finds
your site through a search engine is already actively
looking for exactly what you provide. You can't
find a more targeted form of marketing than that.
As the number of pages
on the Web grows, so do the number of pages indexed
by the search engines. Several engines have moved
from the millions of pages indexed into the billions.
With this kind of clutter, high rankings are no
accident. They have to be thoughtfully planned and
executed like the other tactics in your marketing
mix.
According to industry
leader Search Engine Watch, only 7 percent of searchers
will go beyond the third page of listings. So if
you're not in the top 30 search results, you may
as well not be there at all.
Let's outline all
of that one more time. Without SEO you are quite
possibly throwing away up to 85 percent of your
potential customers and visitors, and a full 80
percent of your potential customers will find their
way to a rival business instead.
Contact
Us to learn more about our custom SEO services
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