What Is SEO?
SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation is the process of enabling your company website to appear higher up the list of search results from today's popular search engines (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Bing being the top three).
Ideally, you want to appear on the first page of results provided by Google when a person does a search for your product or service. Achieving a page 1 listing is the principle motivation behind Search Engine Optimisation.
Broadly speaking, there are 2 methods you need to follow...
Keyword Targeting
You must decide what 'keywords' you want to target. So, for example, if your business involves installing PVC windows in Co.Cork, then doing a search in Google for the keyword term "pvc windows cork" should return a link to your website at or near the top of page 1. Of course, you will be competing with other providers of PVC windows in Cork for the coveted Page 1 ranking, so it is important to emphasise the keywords within the textual content of the site's pages as well as various meta information provided by you but not visible to the person viewing the page.
Useful Links...
www.google.com Google Trends provides useful stats on your chosen keyword(s)
www.semrush.com SEMrush is a Google Keyword and AdWord analyser
Link Building
The task of Link Building involves creating links to other websites within the context of your own site and vice-versa. It's easy to link to another website, but a little harder to get the other website to link back to yours, but two-way links are a more powerful indication to the Search Engines that your site is more credible. You website's page-rank (PR) is calculated by Google based on the number and importance of incoming links. The higher your rank is, the further up the list of results your page will appear. A link from another site on the web is like 'vote' for your site and the higher the Page Rank of the site linking to yours the more important that vote becomes.
