If you want to be successful on the internet, you first need to find potential customers online. There are many paths leading to a website, but more often than not a search engine (like Google) leads you there. As a website owner, you want your site to be placed as high up as possible in the search results and this is where search engine optimisation (SEO) comes in. We have summarised the most important basics and ideas on the topic.

For the last few years search engine optimisation, (SEO), has been one of the most important branches of online marketing. The basic principle is quite simple: if you optimise your website’s content for internet users you will be rewarded with a good position in the list of search results. Whereas the aim of using SEO is to reach a good position in the organic search results, Search Engine Advertising (SEA) aims to reach a good position in the inorganic search results through fee-based ad placements. Both areas are disciplines of Search Engine Marketing (SEM); the generic term SEM refers to all online marketing efforts relating to the search engine.

Google’s search results are comprised of organic and inorganic results. SEA is responsible for the inorganic (i.e. paid) results. By using Google AdWords, every website owner can opt for paid ads and secure themselves one of the top positions in the search results. These ‘sponsored links’ will be identified as such and will be easy to differentiate from the organic results. To get a higher ranking in the organic, natural search results you need a good SEO analysis and then to carry out an optimisation based on the results.

The main aim is to get your site, whether it is an online shop, blog or a different portal, to rank as near to the top as possible in Google’s organic search results. Website owners aim to optimise their site for relevant search terms (keywords) depending on the site’s content. If you are selling women’s purses, search terms such as ‘buy women’s purses online’, ‘cheap women’s purses’ or similar keywords are of interest. If your site is positioned quite high up in the search results, it increases the chances of potential customers clicking on your site. In addition to Google, there are also other search engines, such as Bing and Yahoo, but Google is definitely the market leader and generates 90.3% of all search queries in the UK (Dated May 2017) and 92.5% of all search queries worldwide (Dated May 2017).

One of the biggest advantages of search engine optimisation is the very good cost-benefit ratio. The high positioning on Google is not bought, but achieved through good optimisation. To obtain this, a lot of work and cost have to be invested. But in comparison to keyword-advertising, the financial implications are relatively small. If Google realises that customers and readers often visit the site, buy products, and recommend the shop to others, your site starts to build an online reputation, which in turn increases your ranking. An additional advantage: using numerous SEO analysis tools makes it possible to not only monitor your own success, but also that of your competitor, while simultaneously receiving helpful tips from them. Tools like SISTRIX and Searchmetrics provide a detailed analysis of your competitor. You can find more information about this topic in the text entitled ‘SEO Tools’. There are also disadvantages when it comes to SEO: you are dependent on Google. An SEO strategy that is successful at the moment could end up being invalid when the next algorithm update takes place. Building a reputation can be a long process that can take weeks or months, so it is difficult to calculate how much time and money will be spent. Paid ads show results within a few hours or days. If you stop SEA, the visibility of your site will quickly decrease again. Search engine optimisation, however, is a very sustainable discipline with a long-term effect.