If you are new to SEO or you just want to brush up on some extra knowledge, you need a little guide just like this one to help you along the way.  below, we will be going over what SEO is, for the people that are very new to this term, why your website and other creative aspects need SEO and of course the all-time biggest question when it comes to SEO – can you do it yourself or should you hire someone to do it for you?

What Is SEO – Search Engine Optimization

Essentially SEO is a marketing term, but it’s focused on growing your visibility and presence in search engine results – the kind you don’t have to pay for directly.  When it comes to SEO there are both on site and off site aspects such as words in an article, words on your blog, you’re coding on your website, even sites you link from.  One of the biggest things to remember about SEO is that it’s not just beneficial to your readers and followers (in terms of content) but it’s also important to search engines and it’s important that your website is structured so that search engines like Google can understand your website; what kind of a site is it, what is it used for, what if any is your niche, are keywords being used, if so which ones, etc.

SEO is an ever changing tactic, it never seems to stay the same, but the basic principles do; make your visitors and search engines happy when they visit your website and chances are A) they will keep coming back and B) they will allow your page or website to show up more frequently in the search engine listings and in a good spot too.  Speaking of good spots, search engines that place your website on their listings can do so from page 1-100, even more on other search engines besides Google!  The pages that are considered to be the prime time spots are pages 1-3.

Website SEO and Why You Need It

To be honest, every website on the web needs SEO.  It doesn’t matter if you are a freelancer, if you have a small business from home, or if you have a larger business – or any other reason to have a site; blogs, affiliate products, etc. you absolutely need SEO and here is why:  Any person that owns a website right now will tell you that a majority of their traffic to the website they run comes by way of search engines.  It’s not the ads you put on classified sites, it’s not by word of mouth, and its surely not social media marketing.  For example, one of my websites that I have is very niche-y and when checking my stats as to where my traffic comes from the stats look something like this; Search Engines (Google, yahoo, Bing, ask, etc.) 60%, social sites (Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) 20% and all other marketing tactics 20%.  Of course sometimes these stats do change, but search engines are always the forerunners in my visitor’s stats.

Search engines are a really nice option because they allow you to get targeted people to your website by way of content and keywords.  Essentially the people that visit your website 99% of the time are there for a reason; because they know what you are offering, is something they need and chances are they also know this because they found you on…. a search engine!  There are so many benefits to search engine optimization.  Search queries – those little tiny white boxes you type into when you visit a search engine are a gold mine.  They have more value than you could possibly imagine and yet SEO is pretty simple as long as you follow the basic fundamentals and build a good foundation.  SEO is a very good ROI option – yes, it’s like investing in the stock market, but more lucrative and less risky.  In fact, out of all of the marketing and promotion options you are considering, SEO is by far and wide the best investment.

Is SEO Something I Can Do Myself?

Different people will have different answers for this.  On one hand, if you know nothing about SEO, it might be a good idea to hire a top SEO expert in New Jersey so that you really benefit from the overall benefit of SEO.  On the other hand, you might already know a lot about SEO but you just might need someone to handle it for you for time reasons.  So this is a question that is kind of hard for me to understand.  I guess in reality it depends on you; your knowledge and expertise, and your time availability and money.  As a website owner though, its important to at least have a basic knowledge of SEO – even if you aren’t doing it on your own, it’s still important to know how it works, why it works, what SERPs are, how to do keyword research, etc.