Search Engine Optimization

Being ranked near the top of the natural (or 'organic') search engine results when customers search for your business can significantly increase the amount of traffic your website receives.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is perhaps one of the most widely misunderstood tools in Internet marketing. Many business owners have heard of it, but even those with basic knowledge of SEO often find themselves frustrated by the conflicting advice of so-called 'SEO experts'.

(For a basic overview of how the search engines decide which sites to show in the natural search results, see our Small Business Internet Marketing article, Understanding Search Engines, The Key to Your Online Success.)

At Marlannah Group, we believe it's vital to understand a few things about search engine optimization:

• SEO is part art, part science. It can include elements as diverse as examining (and changing, if necessary) your website structure and architecture, content, links, and more.
  
  
• Search engines change their algorithms. A good search engine optimizer has to understand the changes (as much as that's possible, at least, since the search engines don't actually tell you the specifics of what they're changing.)
  
  
• Your competitors make changes. SEO is definitely more than a one-shot deal; it requires ongoing monitoring and work to be effective.
  
  
• Ethical SEO can produce a strongly positive return on investment over the long term; so-called 'black hat' SEO tactics may produce a temporary increase in search engine results, but can also result in being banned by the search engines.