Does My Website Need Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

It’s an undisputed fact that having a website for your business is extremely important.   Unfortunately, the “if we build it, they will come” mentality doesn’t work in today’s online world, no matter how appealing and user-friendly a website may be.  Sure, people can probably find your site if they know your organization’s name or web address but what if they don’t?  How will you reach those potential leads for ERP software consulting or installation that are searching for more information?

You’ve got a good chance at reaching them with Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

It all starts with a search
Before we get into what SEO means, it makes sense to first understand how search engines work.  Each search engine has a huge database that it builds by sending out a “spider” (software) to crawl the web and index all of its various pages.  When you type a phrase or question into Google or Bing, the search engine springs into action and quickly sorts through its database of web pages to find matches to your query.  You are then presented with a list of the “best” matches that the search engine has ranked for you in order of relevancy.

So how does it know which pages are the most relevant?  Well, each search engine has its own secret algorithm, which is a very complex formula that it uses to determine which pages it thinks will be most helpful to you based on what you searched for.  We don’t know exactly how the engines rank pages (they keep that information under lock-and-key), but over time the industry has developed a set of practices for various elements of web pages that search engines look at.  This is SEO, or search engine optimization.

Let them know you’re out there
As of this May 2009, comScore reported that 299 million searches were performed on Google per day.  It’s clear that people are using search engines more and more to find information, so why not use search engine optimization to give your website the best possible shot at being found in a search?  At the most basic level, SEO helps tell search engines what the pages of your website are about.  The better optimized your web pages are for terms related to your business, the more likely you will appear higher in search engine results for those terms.

Let’s say that a business in Portland, Maine sells Sage MAS 90 & 200 ERP software (for example) – obviously they want to show up for a search on their company name (which they probably would without any search engine optimization), but other relevant terms they might like to appear for in a search could include “Portland, Maine ERP software consulting”, “Sage MAS 90, 200 Portland Maine”, “Portland, Maine ERP accounting software”, etc.  SEO involves techniques such as finding the keywords that are relevant to the products and services your business provides, making sure each web page has appropriate title tags and meta tags with these keywords, and that the keywords or phrases that you choose to focus on also appear naturally within the content of your site.  There are many elements to SEO, but even implementing some of these basic practices help tell a search engine that your website would be a good match for those terms when someone performs a search for them.

That sounds good, but how do I do it?
Proper SEO implementation needs constant love and attention.  The person charged with handling it needs to be able to devote time on a regular basis to learn the fundamentals and keep abreast with industry news (the internet changes every day), create a strategy for each web page (which also includes keyword research) and implement it, constantly monitor rankings, and then make tweaks whenever necessary.  SEO is not a once-and-your-done project; the process is ongoing.

An experienced firm or consultant would be able to help you with your SEO strategy, put it into action, and manage the campaign.  If marketing budgets are tight and you have a person in your own organization that could take it on, there are many resources on the web with information that can help you get started, such as SEOMoz.  They offer various how-to guides and tools (many of them are free) to get you started.

About the Author

Kasi is organic search manager at Hall Web Services. Upon joining Hall in 2009, she brought her professional experience in market research, customer support, project management, and website marketing to Hall's internet marketing team.