Online advertising and marketing is here in a big way, and it is definitely here to stay. In order to enhance online visibility on the internet, anyone wishing to target a large audience, be it the writer of a blog or ecommerce sites, is opting for ways to ensure that their page stays among the top results thrown up by a search engine. While there are many ways to get this done, the most common remain, usage of proper keywords and tags, sharing on social media and of course, via Search Engine Optimization Services.
Putting things into perspective, just because a particular page is at the top of the many thousands of results provided by a search engine may not be because it is the best service or has the most relevant content. It simply points to the fact that the page was written by people knowing the intricacies of search engine optimization inside and out. However, for the general user, short of time and inclination to go trawling through page after page of similar looking results, it is the first few entries that gets his/her attention.
Enhancing the visibility of your page:
Your average Joe has just about as much information regarding Search Engine Optimization as a fish has about climbing a tree. It is you, the writer/entrepreneur/business-owner/website-designer who has to understand how this process actually works. To start with, one has to know the difference between SEO and things like content creation, website visibility, and online media and where they all fit in to create the ideal online search experience for the end user.
If you don’t really get the idea, fret not. This article is here to help you get a clear understanding of the facts.
What is SEO based on?
Irrespective of the nature of the content of a website, using search engine optimization as and when required indeed goes a long way in increasing the presence of your weblog or online store. If you are unable to do it yourself, there are a number of agencies specializing in SEO who will do the needful for you to ensure your website remains at the top of the charts. It’s an important requirement to verify the credentials of the agency before entrusting them with the job. There are several unscrupulous agencies that are rip-offs and hardly add any extra visibility. If it is possible, get in touch with other people who have had their websites optimized for search engines by the same agency and look up reviews of their service online. To put it very simply, search engine optimization works by tweaking certain settings that result enhanced ranking of the particular site. This makes it visible to a greater number of users searching for related topics on a search engine like Google, Yahoo or Bing.
How effective is SEO?
Any argument is incomplete without statistics to prove the point so here are a few numbers that should give you a fair idea about the importance of SEO.
- 90% of hits on a particular web page begin from a result shown by the search engine, as opposed to less than 10% from direct navigation to the site.
- 83% of users surveyed said that they most commonly avoid the advertisements and focus on the so-called ‘organic’ results instead.
- Now process this. A whopping 94% of the users surveyed said that they hardly ever look beyond the first result page, and 60% felt that if it wasn’t in the top 10 links it probably didn’t exist.
- Search engines provide the highest amount of online traffic to websites and are 3 times more effective than social media.
Content creators take advantage of these benefits provided by SEO to design and layout their web content in such a way as to ensure top visibility and retain that spot. Most users prefer links that contain the words or phrases that they searched for and tend to ignore ones that don’t, which is why one should see that the site description gives a brief yet clear statement about the content it leads to. After all, the success of a website is directly linked to its organization and the kind of user experience it provides, and not just what it contains.
