SEO – A Beginner’s Guide

As a small business with a website, the world of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can be a very confusing place.

There is so much conflicting information online about SEO and what you should and shouldn’t do in order to get your website ranked highly by the search engines.

This beginner’s guide aims to give you a broad overview of SEO and the role it can play in your business;

• What is SEO?

SEO is the commonly used abbreviation for Search Engine Optimisation.

SEO is the process of optimising your website through a variety of different factors so that it ranks well for your chosen keywords and phrases in the search engine results.

• Why is SEO important to my business?

The figures released for 2009 showed that 70% of UK households had access to the internet which equates to 18.3 million homes.

With so many people having the internet at their fingertips and looking for products and services online, making sure your website gets found by your target market is critical, and that’s what SEO can do if it’s done correctly.

For example, if you’re a plumber who covers the whole of London, ideally you’d want to be on page 1 of the search engine results for “plumbers London” and other similar phrases as these are searched for by thousands of people every month.

If you were on page 25 of the search results for “plumbers London” it’s very unlikely you’ll get any share of the search engine traffic for that particular phrase.

Depending on your industry you could be missing out on a share of tens of thousands of unique searches for the products or service you offer every month; that’s why SEO is so important.

• When should I think about SEO?

You need to consider SEO before you get your website designed and ask questions of your web designer to ensure your site is optimised from the day that it’s launched, see our 10 questions to ask an SEO agency article for examples.

Many companies still treat the SEO process as an afterthought and this can cost you more money to sort out, not to mention a period of losing out on traffic and potential online sales.

• Is DIY SEO an option?

There are a number of different facets to SEO which including the way your site is coded, the content on your site and the number and quality of incoming links from other sites.

While most of the information you need for SEO is available for free online, it is an exhaustive topic and one that you won’t have time to master if you’re also running a small business.

It’s important to bear in mind that you’re probably going to be competing with bigger companies who use SEO professionals, so taking responsibility for the entire process yourself probably isn’t the best idea.

However, there are certain aspects of SEO that you can do yourself if you have the time and inclination, which we’ve outlined below.

• What are the basics of SEO?

Putting the more technical aspects of SEO aside, there are two main areas you can work on yourself to help improve your search engine rankings.

Updating your content regularly – write unique, regular and relevant news stories and blog posts for your website.

Link building – see our beginner’s guide to link building and top 10 link building tips articles.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 5th, 2010 at 9:00 am and is filed under Guides for Beginners, Search Engine Optimisation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.