seoIf you’ve been doing business online for any period of time then you’ve surely heard about search engine optimisation or SEO and how it has become an indispensable part of web marketing. How exactly is this so? Simply hearing about it is one thing, understanding it is another story.

Now many reputable web marketing agencies like Think Big Online define SEO as the act of influencing search engine results such that it yields a favourable and albeit profitable results for one’s business website. It involves among other things, creating web content that is perceived as valuable by search engines and actual users putting your website on top of search results for relevant queries. For example let’s say you are a pest control company operating in Adelaide; it would certainly be beneficial if you can get your website listed on the first page of Google for people searching for “pest control in Adelaide” and similar search terms. That’s where search engine optimisation actually comes in.

A number of notable studies like the ones offered by http://www.thinkbigonline.com/ suggests that SEO is still the most effective way of marketing or promoting one’s product or service online. Good SEO drives traffic and more traffic means more eyes on your business offerings. More traffic means an abundance of opportunities for your business to make a sale.

People generally only click on the first few results of the search engine queries and rarely ever check the 2nd and succeeding pages. You can probably attest to this behaviour yourself. The highly coveted top positions for relevant search queries garner the most clicks and remain crucial to the success of any business online.

Granted there are definitely other ways to market your business on the web – paid advertising (Adwords, buying backlinks, email marketing, etc) However, none offer results that are as long lived as that of a good SEO strategy. Unlike paid advertising, the results stay and may benefit you for much longer.