I am often asked about Search Engine Optimization: "What is it?" "Do I need it?" "How do I do it?" "I received an email about improving my website's ranking on search engines, should I reply and do this?" "Isn't there a way to trick Google and get my site listed first?" and numerous other questions. If you thought about some of the same questions, you are not alone. This is a hot topic, and rightfully so as it directly affects the effectiveness of your website and potentially your bottom-line.

What is Search Engine Optimization?
In simple terms, Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for short, means to optimize your website in such a way that search engines are able to accurately interpret your site, index your content in their database, and present links to your relevant content in response to specific search queries. Here is the desired result: if you have a website for your 'widget' business, and an individual searches for 'widgets' on Google (or Bing or any other search engine), you would like your website to appear as high as possible in the list of results presented to that individual. As you can see, this provides a great benefit: this individual now knows about your company and that your business is related to their search topic of interest. They also have a link to visit your website and can now potentially become one of your customers.

So, how do you optimize a website?
This is not an easy question to answer. The algorithms used by the top search engines are a closely guarded secret, so the exact way they rate websites in not really known and likely varies from one to another. There are, however, many good practices that are generally accepted to provide good results. From those, here are a few basics concepts of which you should be aware. Understanding these will help to greatly improve your site.

Effective Site Design. Search engines index your site by sending out robots, or spiders, to crawl your site (and every other site as well) and bring that information back with them. The spiders are not viewing your site like we do; they are reading the code that makes up your site. It is vitally important that your code be written in such a way so that it makes sense to the spiders. For example, if your page headlines are images rather than text (because you like the way it looks), the spiders will not be able to read them, so they will miss that important information. The way you use tables to structure your site, the use of flash elements, how your navigation works, how you code your heads and subheads, all of this and more can detract or enhance the indexing of your site by search engines. These may not be changes you can make yourself, but a good web designer can ensure that your site is coded in a way that will enable efficient and thorough indexing.

Content, Content, Content. One thing you likely can do yourself is to create content. The best way to increase the value of your website is to have great content—and lots of it. I'm not talking about pages with text that goes on forever—that would overwhelm your site visitors. Better to have many articles, pages and blogs with content that is highly relevant to your business. It should be well organized on your site and easily accessible through your intuitive site navigation system and cross linked from other content where possible. This will not only benefit your site visitors and reflect well on your expertise, but it also shows the search engines that your site is valuable and should be seen. One given in the world of the web is that if you create great content, people will find you (through the search engines of course).

Get Relevant Links to Your Site. Another thing you can do yourself is to find other websites that can link to your site. It is believed that search engines consider who is linking to your site when determining your ranking (though this is not nearly the only thing they consider). Look for good, highly relevant sites such as trade organizations, complementary service and product sites, educational sites, customer sites, etc. Ask for links, join organizations, or offer your services or expertise in exchange for a link. One warning: stay away from sites and directories set up only for the purpose of providing links. These can detract from your ranking. A few links from good quality, highly relevant sites are always preferable to many links from these junk sites (see the next section).

You Can't Fool Search Engines. So, regarding the unsolicited email you received offering a website analysis and a guarantee to improve your position on search engines. Don't bother. Not because you may not need it, but think about it, are you really going to trust a random email that arrived just like one for a "Canadian Pharmacy?" Many of these are outright scams, or they employ deceptive practices that they claim will improve your rating, when in fact, they could get you blacklisted on a search engine. If anyone says they will guarantee number one (or top 10, or whatever) ranking on a search engine, run the other way. No one can guarantee that. Check out this informative SEO article by Google on the subject. Finally, use common sense, if a search engine could be easily fooled by deceptive practices, they wouldn't be providing good results to their users and no one would use them—you wouldn't use them would you?

This is just a small part of the big subject of Search Engine Optimization. It can be a complex process, but don't panic, you don't need to immediately rush out and spend a lot of cash to optimize your site. You can continue to do small things to improve your content. Try searching for your product or service on the search engines and see where you end up in the list. Try to use search terms that you think your customers will use. This will show you where you are now so you can see if you are making progress. Remember, the best (and least expensive) time to incorporate SEO is when you are building a new site, so if there is a new site or major upgrade in your future, wait for that. If you rely on print advertising or social media to drive people to your site, SEO may not be as big of a priority for you. Most importantly, become more informed and learn about SEO before you spend any money to improve your site so you are sure you are making a wise investment in your business.

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