You just opened the world’s greatest specialty shop. However, if that shop is tucked behind a warehouse off a dirt road in a rural part of town, you probably won’t get much business. It’s the same with your business website. No matter how slick it looks, how much it offers, or how much time you spent developing it, if they can’t find it, you wasted your efforts.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of setting up websites to make them more search engine-friendly, thus getting higher positions in search results and ultimately more traffic to your site. This is achieved through the editing of content and html code, links coming into your site and through your overall presence and reputation on the internet. Essentially, SEO is kind of like networking.
Effective networking is about building trust that forms the basis for lasting and beneficial relationships. Your business reputation will grow if you form many and strong relationships, but also if you offer your expertise and are genuinely interested in helping others regardless of what you receive in return. If your intention is to flood the area with your business cards and aggressively sell, sell, sell regardless of what others may need, you will turn off potential customers and harm your business’s reputation.
Many SEO techniques follow the same principles. Have a strong presence on the internet. Absolutely, write articles for article directories or related business sites, start a blog, contribute to forums, join internet and social networking groups, start a newsletter, etc. But also, make sure that “strong presence” is useful and trusted. Nobody wants to follow a link, read a comment or blog, or be emailed a newsletter that is merely an advertisement in disguise. Disgruntled viewers can cause your rankings direct harm. Search Engines don’t like this either. In fact, such behavior can be interpreted as spam and thus hurt your rankings.
Search Engines and your potential customers alike want your expertise. They want to sense that you are genuinely interested in helping them. This sensible approach will indeed improve your SEO.
