Easy Search Engine Optimization - Talk the Talk

Being discoverable is what the internet is all about. It means putting yourself about a bit, so that your customers can find you. The more places you can be found, the more your customers will find you.

It's the equivalent of putting a postcard in the post office window advertising your services. The more post offices and shops the postcard is in, the better chance you have of being discovered. This is what being discoverable means. This is a metaphor for search engine marketing.

You don't need to be a computer guru to get your head around this. Even if you don't know how to do this yourself, at the very least you now understand what you are trying to achieve, and that is - you want to be found. You want to be found anywhere and everywhere that your customers hang out. When customers can find you, they can buy from you.

In this article I am going to discuss the initial steps that need to be taken on the journey to discovery which makes a website discoverable by search engines which is known as search engine optimization or SEO, using search keywords.

Search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN play a major role in discovery and are the place that most of your customers go when trying to find services and products like yours. The words your customers enter are called search terms. Search engines match search terms to websites they have listed, or indexed in their database.

When searching, customers type in a string such as 'cheap flights' and press the search button. Search engines return a list of sites that they think are most relevant for the search term 'cheap flights'. For the purpose of this article, it is sufficient to say that search engines will search through their database for websites containing the words 'cheap flights'.

The words 'cheap' and 'flights' are called keywords. All sites returned will contain these words somewhere on the site. Any website that doesn't contain theses keywords will not be returned, even though it may be relevant. If a site owner preferred the term 'low cost airline' over 'cheap flights', their website would not appear in the results of the 'cheap flights' search - what a pity.

Talk the talk. It's the first thing a website must accomplish to become discoverable and is a major goal in search engine marketing - SEM. Talking the talk means using the search keywords and search terms that your customers use, word for word.

In the example above, any site involved in airline travel needs to include the keywords 'cheap flights' if they have this service to offer, and if those are the words that customers use to search for that service.

This is a new phenomenon in the world of marketing, known as search engine marketing. If you want to be discoverable online - you need to mirror the words that your customers use. You are not free to choose these keywords, because if they don't match your customers search terms - you won't be found. This doesn't apply to global brands because everybody knows who they are and will search for them by name.

Small to medium sized enterprises do not have this luxury. Do not be fooled by the results of searching for your own website address. Yes - you are top of the list - problem is - nobody knows your website address - so their not going to search for it.

Your site needs to be found for the services and products you sell, and the first step to discoverability is to describe them using the search terms and search keywords that customers use to discover them.

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