SEO: Superman of Digital Marketing's Universe

Poster Child of Digital Marketing

It’s almost impossible to have a conversation about digital marketing without mentioning SEO, the current poster-child of digital marketing. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is used to increase the visibility of websites and spike traffic by improving site content in order to rank higher in search engine user queries.

Search Engine Optimization

Put into the simplest terms possible, search engine optimization serves the purpose of communicating with search engines so that they can match website content with relevant queries. Understanding SEO and what it does requires understanding SEO’s five main components: content, keywords, linking, social media and strategy.

1) Content

Optimizing a website to increase traffic means that generating high quality content is essential. There are two important components involved with generating great content: content relevance and quality. Search engines are becoming more and more sophisticated in the way they qualify content that appears as a result of users’ search queries. Providing relevant content will establish credibility on the part of the site generating content and will reflect the expertise of the brand or author. In addition, it will also improve the verifiability of content on a site that search engines will be more likely to present in query results. This in turn has a higher probability of generating increased traffic. Producing high quality content is another way to strengthen the possibility of increased traffic through search queries by establishing the authority of the brand or content author. For successful SEO results, it is essential to master high quality writing, site design, layout, organization, and association. Once a site is able to establish a solid content blend of relevance and high quality, chances of achieving SEO success are greatly enhanced.

2) Keywords

Most of the research I reviewed shared similar opinions on the importance of main elements in successful search engine optimization. Keywords, however, is the one area that produced conflicting opinions among experts. Many think using keywords is the absolute best thing invented since buttered bread. Others feel using keywords can actually damage a site’s optimization chances by overusing certain phrases, causing their ranking to decrease in search engines. Here’s what I’ve learned: Keywords are a must, but should be used wisely. Search engines pull keywords and phrases from site content to match results with relevant search queries.

For example: Suppose Samsung talked about their tablets on their website without calling them tablets, instead describing them as “flat, light, keyboard-less computers”. Users looking for tablets would enter search queries with keywords such as tablet, pad or touchpad. Search results would effectively exclude Samsung’s website due to the lack of content relevancy, quality and product understanding.

Without relevant keywords to pull from, a search engine will exclude a site from search results. Most search engines will reduce the ranking of a site that uses repetitive content because they consider it as less relevant and low quality. Thus it is important to use keywords and phrases wisely to avoid repetition and increase content quality as much as possible. Click Here to Continue Reading...