Often times business owners overlook or dismiss an important part of the online marketing process when in fact every effective Internet marketing strategy should involve search engine optimization.
Ignoring SEO is like launching a website and not telling anyone.
Whether you are doing pay per click marketing, blogging, affiliate marketing, or even social media marketing, SEO should be incorporated into the process.
This is understandable considering the influence that search engines hold in the online marketing industry.
Your online business will only reach its highest potential if you target customers from the top search engines.
The biggest opportunities lie in "search".
Every experienced online entrepreneur will confirm this fact.
The good news about SEO is that it isn't that difficult to implement.
You don't have to be technically sound to be able to implement immediately.
The top mistake that a lot of marketers make is thinking that SEO is a practice of manipulating the search engines.
These people focus so much on their site rankings that they lose focus on the quality of their content.
Although this strategy may get instant results, it doesn't work well in the long-term.
Your site may rank number one on Google for a given period, but if it contains poor content, it will be very easy for it to loose its' top spot on search engines.
If you are totally new to search engine optimization, the process may look very complicated.
It can be intimidating.
However, as you get to grasp the basics, you will soon realize that it isn't as difficult as you think it is.
The bottom line - SEO is merely about creating websites and online content that are friendly and useful both to users and search engines.
This is the number one thing business owners need to understand.
Below are the basic steps on how to implement search engine optimization.
Understanding these steps will help you get the most out of your SEO efforts.
1.
Research your keywords.
In finding your keywords, you need to keep asking yourself the question, "What will users type in the search bar to find my content?" or "If someone walked into my retail location what would I want them to look for?" Using keyword research tools like Google's own Keyword Suggestion Tool will help you to quantify how many searches a keyword is getting in a month.
Obviously, you will be targeting keywords that get the most number of searches.
However, you also need to take into account the competitiveness of the keyword.
A keyword may get a million searches a month but if the competition is too high, it's best that you go looking for alternative keywords.
2.
Integrate relevant keywords into your content in order to improve search engine indexing of your articles, images, or even a video.
Using your keywords will help your content get found by your targeted users.
Effective keyword integration is a very crucial aspect of search engine optimization.
You should know where and when to place your keywords for optimum results.
Add highly targeted keywords at the beginning and at the end of an article and use relevant keywords in the title and article summary as well for example.
3.
Build links.
It put a lot of weight into your site's backlinks so you should devote a significant amount of your time into link building so that you are generating leads back to your website.
Each approach above has its merits.
If you are able to understand and follow the basic steps discussed above, implementing your search engine optimization strategies on your own or with the help of an expert will be an easier and more effective task.