Opti­miz­ing a site for search engines, SEO, means apply­ing tech­niques to make the website’s pages eas­ier for the search engines to cat­a­logue, and also pro­mote the site’s rel­e­vance to cer­tain search cri­te­ria in order to earn promi­nent place­ment on the search engines’ results pages. As the major­ity of searchers will click on a result on the first results page that a search engine dis­plays, earn­ing a spot on the first page can make a very big dif­fer­ence to a company’s online mar­ket­ing suc­cess, not to men­tion their finan­cial success.



Hey man, it's organic

The search results the engines pro­duce from their algo­rithms are referred to as “organic”, or “nat­ural”, search results. Another option to get a promi­nent list­ing on a search engine results page (SERP) is to buy ad space on the page. This approach is known as Paid Search, pay-per-click, or PPC. The ads are free, until some­one clicks on one. Each click is billed for, based on a price that is deter­mined by a con­stant, dynamic auc­tion sys­tem. Price alone does not allow a com­pany to get a promi­nent plac­ing, how­ever, as the search engines are still try­ing to ensure that the results being shown are rel­e­vant, regard­less of whether they are organic or paid.

With a strong SEO pro­gram, com­pa­nies can be dis­cov­ered by more peo­ple on the search engines because they will appear promi­nently on more searches, and be included in a wider array of searches. The terms peo­ple use to search online are referred to as key­words. A key­word can be a sin­gle word or a com­bi­na­tion of words, like “restau­rant” or “Ital­ian restau­rants in Manhattan”.

A rose by any other name...

If you owned an Ital­ian restau­rant in Man­hat­tan, you would want your restau­rant to show up on the SERPs when­ever some­one was search­ing for a restau­rant like yours, in your part of town. To do that, you might have to have your site opti­mized for addi­tional key­words that some­one might include in a search that could be sat­is­fied by your business’s web­site, like best Ital­ian restau­rants in man­hat­tan, mid­town man­hat­tan restau­rants, mid­town man­hat­tan Ital­ian food, mid­town man­hat­tan Ital­ian din­ner, etc.. The point is, a com­pany web site needs to be opti­mized based on an under­stand­ing of how search engines work, and how peo­ple search. What key­words are they using to search for what you have to offer?

Reward, and risk

How impor­tant is it for a busi­ness to be found when some­one is using a search engine to research a pur­chase? Con­sider this: nearly two-thirds of con­sumers (61%) use search engines to help them in their prod­uct research deci­sions lead­ing up to pur­chase. (eCon­sul­tancy, July 2010)

Actual online pur­chas­ing is also increas­ing dra­mat­i­cally. Data from com­Score reveals that Q4 of 2010 set new records for e-Commerce spend­ing in the U.S. Retail mar­ket – over $43 bil­lion dol­lars. As the inter­net grows, the num­ber of searches grows too. 

If the com­pany web­site is well-designed and focused, the increase in vis­i­tors to the site as a result of a strong SEO strat­egy can cre­ate a sig­nif­i­cant boost in busi­ness. The biggest risk to a com­pany of not devel­op­ing a search engine opti­miza­tion plan is that it allows com­peti­tors to steal mar­ket share. It is dif­fi­cult for any com­pany to be suc­cess­ful if cus­tomers do not know about them, or do not find them when they are in the mar­ket for what that com­pany offers.  As more and more cus­tomers turn to search to find busi­nesses, prod­ucts and ser­vices, either from their com­put­ers or their cell phones, a solid search engine opti­miza­tion strat­egy is an essen­tial mar­ket­ing tool.


Biography / Resume : Karl joined Mediative’s service delivery team in 2008. A year later, he moved to the company’s research department where he conducted online surveys, eye-tracking studies, one-on-one interviews and usability testing. Most recently, he transitioned to the marketing department. Before Mediative, Karl worked in sales and marketing. In 1997, he caught the digital bug and became the original “webmaster” for Roland Canada Music. Around the same time, he began teaching the relatively new topic of Internet marketing to college and university students. Karl’s insatiable curiosity and drive to get to the core and substance of every situation has served him well in his various roles at Mediative.