It doesn’t matter whether you are a part-time blogger, a small business owner or the manager of a large corporation. When it comes to online success, we all start off in the same place and must learn to tame the Search Engine Beast in order to get anywhere. After all, when you want to know about something where do you start? Unless you still live in the dark ages and are surrounded by old encyclopaedias the chances are you use a search engine. This is why it is important to keep the search engines (as well as your readers) happy unless you want to leave the online world as quickly as you entered it.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for search engine optimisation. Unfortunately the online world is not at all like the offline world in which you could hypothetically build a shop, open the doors and then watch people flood in from the street. The ‘street’ in the online world is the search engine. In order for people to visit your website online they need to know it exists and the search engine streets are a lot longer than the streets in your nearest town. So although you might get the odd customer drop in, you won’t get a high amount of ‘walk-in’ traffic unless your site is on the first few pages of Google for your search term. As the search engines are responsible for high levels of traffic, it’s important to optimise your site to make it search engine friendly.

Why Should You Care about SEO?

The best thing about SEO is that when done correctly, it can bring free, targeted traffic to your blog and in high numbers if you manage to rank on the first four pages of Google for your search term. The higher your website ranks in the search engine, the more chance you have of making sales, attracting new clients and increasing your reputation in the offline world.

Taming the Beast

Of course if SEO was easy, everyone would be doing it and there would be thousands more people making a living from working online than there currently are. Whether you pay someone else to do the hard work for you or whether you decide to put the time and effort in yourself there are a few things that you can do to tame the Search Engine Beast and even get on friendly terms with it.

1. Firstly, it is important to know your niche. If you are confused about your company, your readers will be too so take the time to really decide upon what it is you want to do and who you are. This way you can work out the type of reader you want to attract and design your website with them in mind.
2. Work out what phrases and words are likely to be used to find the product or service you are offering. Then use the Google keyword tool to see which keywords have a lot of monthly searches (if you can find one that has little competition – even better). Use these keywords naturally in your text.
3. Write high quality content and update regularly. Don’t copy content or use PLR articles unless you want your site to be delisted completely.
4. Use appropriate headings and formatting. Make sure the font type is suitable and large enough for your readers to read.
5. Visit other blogs and websites in your niche and post comments (make sure they’re relevant) with links to your blog or ask the website owner to include a link to your blog in their blog roll.
6. Don’t use any black hat SEO techniques at all – stick to white hat wherever possible.

Taming the Search Engine Beast is not easy and if you don’t have the time or effort to put into an SEO campaign you may be better off enlisting the help of an SEO reseller company like Zeno SEO to help you with the process.