Why SEO is important to your marketing plan

With over 14 billion internet searches performed each month, your business’s internet presence is of highest priority. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is most effective for online conversions, reducing marketing spend, and increasing sales. SEO is the process of allowing search engines to find your site, index it, categorize it, and rank it.

Important factors in SEO are adding new content often, having your site organized logically, placing keywords in content and in external text links, and the quantity of quality sites linking to your site. The most important factors are: keywords and links. Implementing a strategic SEO plan will allow you to reduce costs on pay per click advertising as well. Your site will rank high enough to be placed in the top organic sites of Google’s page rank system. Organic listings have a 60% - 70% click through rate.

Some ways to check for good keywords are to read your site content thoroughly and jot down the most commonly used phrases. You can also check your competitor’s site and see what keywords they are using to drive traffic to their website. Some keyword research tools you can use to help you are: Google insight, Wordtracker, and SEM Rush.

The best positions to place your keywords are in your title tags, headings, paragraph titles, body copy, link urls, image alt tags, and meta tags. These are the places the search engines deem most important in finding relevant information on your site and indexing it correctly. You should allow approximately two concepts per page and each page should have its own keywords, unique page title, and unique meta description.

To help you with external links, find directories to list in and link your blog. You can use Yahoo explorer api to see who’s linking to your competitors and what keywords they are using. Some other link analysis tools are Linkscape and Buzzstream. Also, be sure to link consistently site wide. Links will build traffic to your website and they let the search engines know that your site is important. Always use keywords in links and try to vary the keywords.

Be sure to use all your social media applications as well. Create them with keyword rich content and relevant links using your keyword variations. Social media networks are a tremendous tool that can create multiple links to your website and improve your search engine rankings.

Apply these techniques and soon you will be reducing your overall marketing costs and increasing your online conversions.