The term SEO is becoming much more popular, but how many people actually fully understand what it means? With so many companies offering their SEO services, is it better to use a search engine optimisation agency or teach yourself?
Choosing whether or not to employ an agency that specialises in SEO can be a very confusing decision. You can use an established agency if you have a great understanding of SEO and how it works,
but just do not have the resources available to do it yourself. Perhaps you have a good understanding but due to large competition in your industry, you need someone to take it to the next level. However, you could be like the majority of UK business owners and not completely understand what SEO is, how it works and how to do it effectively.
So what is SEO?
The acronym stands for search engine optimisation. Search engines are quite an enigma, but they are used to search through all the information on the web quickly and efficiently. They can do this by ‘crawling’ websites, picking out certain words and phrases and indexing the information. When you input a phrase (or ‘keyword’) into a search engine, it will trawl through all its indexed documents and return a list of the most appropriate websites for you.
What search engines are there?
There are many search engines in existence but the most well-known and popular ones are Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and Bing.
Why is SEO important for your business?
People get bored and frustrated when looking for information on the internet. A lot of people give up before they find what they need, and over 50% of people do not go past the first page of search engine results. Getting your business on the first page of these results pages is extremely important; the potential traffic (and business) a search engine can generate to your website is huge.
How can you get on the first page of a search engine?
This is the all important question. Search engines use algorithms which decide on where your website gets ranked. Considered in these algorithms are your website’s keywords, social networking interaction, site structure, page titles, meta descriptions, inbound links, backlinks and HTML coding, amongst a host of other factors. This is just a small selection, and working these can be time consuming, even for the most SEO aware. If you have just a basic knowledge, you may be scratching your head in despair just reading that list.
How to grasp SEO techniques
There are many online and offline books and courses which you can read or use to gain SEO information, however, as search engines are constantly changing, so is search engine optimisation. Some of these books can be out of date the minute they come into print.
So should you use a search engine optimisation agency?
Using a search engine optimisation agency is not as expensive as you think. As a result you will see a short term result, and a reliable search engine optimisation agency will also produce long term results. If you are going to invest time and money in your marketing, you should consider employing a specialised company to handle your internet marketing effectively.
