Just recently, I received two related questions from twitter followers; first, do we need SEO or more content? Secondly, is SEO overrated? These are good and valid questions that everyone who hears about SEO everywhere would want to know and which we must evaluate and provide answers for. To get the right answers, let’s evaluate the importance of SEO for a site and the conditions that must be applied for it to work appropriately.
Why is SEO important?
- SEO is important because we are in business and in competition with billions of other sites. Unless you have a site for the sake of it and doesn’t care about your competitors.
- SEO increases the possibility that a customer may find your site when they search for your product or service when using a search engine.
- SEO causes your site to rank higher after a search engine results. It is like deciding to go for shopping. One shop is miles away, while the other one is next door. Obviously the shop next door maybe where you’ll do your shopping from.
- SEO plays a big role in a marketing strategy. Marketing is about numbers: increased sales, profits, big market-share and ultimately that’s what you want to achieve when your site gets more hits. That’s what matters in marketing.
- SEO crowns the King (Content). Content is King, but without SEO it is like a king without a crown.
The searching field is complicated, an ever-evolving art and science that requires constant learning in order to keep up with search engines ever-changing algorithms especially Google’s Panda among many tweaks and spiders. This makes it impossible for one to cover everything in one article. SEO cannot be effective in isolation and depends on many conditions that are required for it to make a significant impact.
7 Conditions for SEO to achieve maximum results
- SEO takes time and must be consistently be applied – Even with the best SEO expert in the world, your site will not appear at the top of Google search results. Because it takes time and patience for any significant results to be evident. It must be applied consistently and permanently.
- SEO requires that it must be done correctly.You must do good research and analysis of keywords. Most importantly, you must optimise keywords in urls, page titles, image file-names, body text, page headings, image alt attributes, description meta-tags etc.
- SEO must be supported by link-building tactics, good authority domains and high value links.
- SEO works well if blended with corresponding value-added practices like good quality content. SEO is like when you go out for shopping and you have many shops to choose from. What will cause you to choose one shop over the other? The answer lies on which shop offers value-added services. Without high value, well researched unique content, SEO is a waste of time and can’t work. It is like an egg with a shell but no yolk inside. Longer, original and well researched content is now believed to rank better than short ones according to Seomoz – a reputable SEO analysts company.
- SEO requires that a site has good navigation and good internal link structure .
- SEO dislikes dead links, with too much flash links or even excessive amount of ads.
- SEO must be supported by site promotional strategies and tactics such as: Use of social media (twitter, facebook, googleplus), social networking sites ( LinkedIn, stumbleupon, delicious etc), PPC, advertisements, Email promotion, placing on free / premium directories, guest blogging etc.
The work of a Search Engine Optimization is not easy at all; it demands hard-work, consistency and resilience to achieve results. The bottom-line is that SEO works in improving the ranking of your site, not single-handedly but in complimentary with other strategies.
What points have I missed? I’d like to learn from you. Let’s engage.
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