So if your not familiar with SEO(Search Engine Optimization) then let me explain. It is a technique that webmasters use to get their sites highly ranked by the search engines such as Google. For many years businesses have thrived by having highly successful SEO strategies which send tonnes of organic traffic to their sites building their leads and increasing sales.
But just like everything these days things tend to change and evolve and it is important that you get to understand what SEO practices will work in 2011. With increased competition and everyone starting to use the same techniques you are probably not going to achieve great results with the same old strategy.
Let me explain what has changed so you can develop your SEO strategy into a more successful one.
Social Media:
Since the introduction of Social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube. They have attracted a majority of the internet users. Search engines will now consider the presence of a site in social networking when it is calculating which position to place it in the search results. This means that in 2011it is vital to have a social presence for your business in order to get higher search results.
Backlinks:
If you look anywhere and ask anybody who knows about SEO, they will probably tell you that you need to get a tonne of links and you'll get that No.1 search result. In the past this was true to some extent, now the search engines have gotten clever and look at the quality of the links. It is much better to have a small number of good quality backlinks then having many bad quality backlinks.
Content:
The major search engines such as Google now look for good quality content when calculating where to place you in the search results. That means it is absolutely necessary to surround your links with great content. But do make sure that you get a balance between link building and creating quality content as even though the search engines try to display the best content at the top but it cannot be guaranteed.
Google:
One other way that SEO has changed over the years is now that Google has taken a large proportion of the search engine marketplace. Current SEO strategies involve how their site will appear in the Google search results, as that is where most of the traffic will come from. Slightly smaller search engines are not to be missed either, Yahoo and MSN are the 2nd and 3rd in the search engine market. But initially it is good practice to get a high Google ranking before looking at how you rank in others.
SEO has come along way since its introduction in the early days of the internet. Modern SEO needs to be adaptive and must accommodate the changes I have listed above. It will always continue to change also, new changes in the algorithms will always affect the search results. Businesses that can adapt and implement these changes are going to benefit greatly from SEO in 2011.