Kenneth Dreyer

What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)? Many have tried to define it before, with various luck. To me SEO is making your website more friendly and trusted by the search engines with the hope of better visibility in their search results on search terms related to your website. The popular search engines are Google, Yahoo and MSN.

SEO is one of the most effective ways of driving relevant users to your site. What makes the users sent by the search engines relevant to your site is that the search engines strives to always deliver its users the best possible results when they search for something. Let’s say that you run a web shop selling mountain bikes. If the search engines would consider you the most relevant website for users searching after “mountain bikes” they would place you first in the search results for that keyword. As you probably can image, users searching for “mountain bikes” would be highly potential customers for a web shop selling mountain bikes. And the best thing is that no matter if the search engines sends you a 100 or 10 000 users on any given day, you don’t have to pay a single cent for it.

Why does my company/organization/website need SEO?

The majority of the traffic on the internet is driven by the major commercial search engines, Google, MSN and Yahoo. Today most users on the internet use the search engines as their main navigation to find information, products, services and more. Millions of searches are made each day, so if you’re selling a product or service there can be quite a lot to gain for search engine optimisation. If your site cannot be found when a potential customer is searching for your products or service… well, you’re missing out on a potential customer then. I’m sure you can image the importance of not doing so.

SEO can be considered a way of marketing. SEO makes your site more visible for users searching for something you can offer on your site. Many companies have experienced that SEO can make (or even break) an organisation’s success. Having targeted users sent to your can provide you with increased revenue, publicity and exposure. Investing in SEO is one of the smartest things an organisation can do with their internet strategy, either it’s paying a professional to do it taking the time to do it themself.

Why can’t the search engines make my site visible without SEO?

Good question. Why should the search engines pick your site as the most relevant to a search term? Image a highly trafficked street. This street has five hair salons, all targeting the same customers. You want to get a new haircut, so which one do you choose? There are several factors you have to consider. Which one gives you more value for money? Will you get the haircut you want? Do you like the inside of their salon? Do you like the people and the service they provide? These are just some of hundreds of questions Google tried to answer when evaluating which site should come first when users search for a specific term. Considering the fact that every day there are millions of new sites that get launched and another millions of sites that change or get improved somehow, it’s very hard for the search engines to keep track of everything that happens on the web and that’s why it’s important for websites to make sure their accessible and presented in a way that makes the search engines job easier.

So how does SEO work?

When talking with clients and explaining how SEO works I like to speak of the 3 cornerstones of SEO. These three factors are closely related to each other and if you do a good job with all of them you are more likely to get good results in the search engines.

First of we have the technical bit. The way your website code and framework is structured plays an important role to how the search engines read your website. There are a lot of things that can be done on this part, varying from serious issues with your site to not so serious ones. The worst thing a website could possible to would be to actually block the search engines from reading their website. You’d be surprised how many organisations do this without knowing it.

The second part is the content on your website. What content you have, the quality and uniqueness of the content and the way your content is presented on your websites plays an important role. It doesn’t matter if your content is better than your competitor’s ones if you’re not presenting it in a good way, both for your users and the search engines. It’s important to do research to find out how to present the content on your website. Keyword research one of many ways to do this (this will be discussed later on the blog).

The content part and the technical part are obviously related to each other. It doesn’t matter how good your content is, if you’re technical bit of the site is a mess and the search engines can’t find or understand your content. And the other way around, it doesn’t help how good and structured your site is on the technical part if your content is no good.

One of the “traps” many SEOs fall into when doing the technical bit and working on their content is that they focus so much on being search engine friendly that they forget their users. On the internet, you have to find a way to please all parts.

The last part, but for from the least important one, is the trust your site have. The trust your site have is mainly measured by the links pointing to your site. A website with good trust in the search engines needs to have a steady stream of new incoming links, from relevant and natural sources. This is another part where many people go wrong when they try to buy links from websites in bad neighbourhoods.

Read more about Search Engine Optimisation in my SEO Guide.

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