Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is one of the most misunderstood marketing mediums out there. There are so many different approaches, depending on what results you want from your website. Every business today, no matter what sector, has an online presence, and research has suggested that 81% of businesses consider blogging, a recent and effective SEO strategy, to be an important part of their marketing plans. Why? Because on average, a company that blogs will have nearly 450% more indexed pages than a Company which doesn’t, increasing the likelihood of potential customers coming across your site.
Of course, businesses will have websites for different reasons. For some; large Corporates, pharmaceutical or industrial companies and government, for example, all the way down to tradesmen and shopkeepers, a website will be for reputational purposes, or to provide information, but online will not form an integral part of their marketing strategy i.e. they will not expect to generate sales or profits via their website. For others, e-commerce sites, advertiser funded sites such as local and national media, or social media, the goal is to drive as much traffic as possible to the site. There really is no such thing as too many hits.
But still there are marked differences between the kind of user different sites want to attract, and accordingly this will affect their SEO strategy. One Company who I recently dealt with explained to me how they had optimised their website to the point where they were ranking number 1 for a particular search phrase. But they soon discovered that users who arrived at their site via this particular search phrase rarely made purchases, and so, despite the large number of visitors they were attracting, they would have been much better off had they optimised the site to a different keyword.
