Have you ever wondered what the big deal is about search engine optimization (SEO)? Everybody seems to be talking about it, and you only have to open up a single website to be confronted with it, even unwittingly so. However, very few of us truly understand what SEO is, and why we need it. Luckily, that is where a good SEO company comes in, as they can make sure your website takes your business to the next level.
What Is Search Engine Optimization?
If you have a website that looks absolutely beautiful, you have only completed half the battle. Because no matter how nice it looks and how user friendly it is, you may as well not have it at all unless people actually find you. That is what SEO does. Basically, it is a form of marketing, but one that doesn’t work solely on getting actual people interested, but rather one that ensures the Google robots and crawlers find the website interesting.
As of September 2014, there were more than one billion live websites online. Try being one of those one billion, and it quickly becomes clear why you have to stand out from the crowd. So, you have to ask yourself what people do in order to find a website. If they know the name of the company, they will most likely simply type that into the URL bar and hope for the best. However, it is far more common for them to use Google to find you instead, whether they know your name or not.
But it gets more complex. Let’s say, for arguments sake, that you are a plumber in Atlanta, GA. You certainly will not be the only one. So, if someone were to type in “plumber in Atlanta” on Google, they are not guaranteed to actually find you. They could just as easily find one of your competitors. What SEO does is make sure that you are the website that people can find.
How SEO Companies Get to Work
When you hire an SEO company, they will start by finding out which keywords people use to find your site – such as plumber in Atlanta. That will be a highly used keyword, so they will also think of other combinations that people are likely to use if they were to look for a company like your own. This will form the basis of all the work that they do in trying to get you a very high ranking.
However, they do more as well. After all, if it was as simple as just finding relevant keywords and putting them on your website, nobody would need a consultant anymore. Some of the things that you should see included in your SEO package besides effective keyword research include:
- On page optimization
- Link building services
- Article submission to relevant directors
- Quality, fresh, engaging content
- Blog writing
- Press release submission
The hope is that your competitors aren’t doing all of those same things as well, or at least that they do it in lesser amounts, so that you can get above them.