SEO. Everyone is talking about it. A lot of people are doing it. But the question is do they know why they’re doing it?

More and more organisations seem to be entering in to SEO simply because they feel they should. Many don’t stop to ask themselves the important question of why? Treating SEO as a simple exercise of trial and error and hoping for the best simply won’t do. If you want to get the best results from SEO in the quickest time you must first put everything in to context.

SEO is all about making your site visible on search engines, improving performance and user experience and most importantly helping web users to find your website easily. Many rush in, ploughing ahead with haphazard strategies and then wonder why they have little or short lived success.

The key to it is simply this; PLAN AHEAD. Ask yourself these simple questions;

• Who is your audience?

• What key words are they using to search?

• Who is your competition?

• What do you want? Leads or sales?

• How do you convert on your site?

The most important thing is to first completely understand your audience and their behaviours before attempting to execute a search engine optimization campaign for your website. Take the time to research and understand your audience. A good starting point is to investigate what key words they are typing in to search engines on a regular basis. A very good tool for this is Google’s external Keyword Tool https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal. This tool allows you to assess what keywords are being used most often. This information will help you to optimise your site in the right way for your customers.

You must also be realistic with yourself about who your competition actually is. If you are a small organisation it is unrealistic to aim to compete with a large multinational. Know your competition and use it to your advantage.

You must be clear about your aims and objectives before putting any techniques in to practice. Asking the above questions will help you to do this. After all, if you don’t know where you’re going, how can you decide on the best way to get there? Taking this step back will help you to generate a clear business plan for your online marketing approach. Once you have asked yourself these questions and thoroughly thought about your objectives, only then are you ready to begin looking at some tools and techniques to aid you in your Search Engine Optimisation Campaign.