Today I am going to be talking about SEO. I am not going to be talking about how to do it but rather I am going to cover what SEO can do for your website, business, blog or reputation. SEO Stands for Search Engine Optimisation and it is a topic I am going to touch on a few times in the coming weeks.

To help cover this topic more effectively I have even gone so far as to obtain an advertiser known to be an expert in the subject. So don't say I never do anything for you...

Having spent a long time having a good long hard look at the state of websites in Thanet I can see that there is only a minimal grasp of even the existence of SEO. If you are one of the few that have understood the basics then I apologise if I make things too simple but I feel it is important to arm Thanet businesses with the tools that can help us all prosper online and off here in Thanet.

The short story is that correctly applied SEO makes your site easier to use, more pleasant to read, brings more visitors and reduces the chances that your site is in breach of certain UK laws. Laws that insist that a disabled person be able to access your site. While the aim is more visitors these other things are a pleasant side effect.

How it all works and how to apply it is todays topic...

So you have a website for your business. Let us assume that you sell books and that you have taken the time to enable real visitors to make the purchase at the site. It does not have to be books - your aim could be to convert visitors to site members, subscribers or even fans.

Whatever you need to get from you visitors you can only get by providing them what they need first.

Now with our book example we shall imagine you have three pages - one each for the books you want to sell. You probably have other pages, samples of the book and so forth. What you will probably want is to get people to one of the three pages that are most likely to make them want your book.

You currently have no visitors but in a few weeks or months Google, Yahoo, Ask and the others will find your site and index it. Then they might send you a few people searching for things. If you have written very good sales pages (another topic altogether) then you might make a few sales.

Of all the possible ways to configure your site there are very few that will yield an optimal return of visitors after the search engines have listed you. SEO is all about gaining that optimum. With it comes the best possible results that your site can produce.

Why should SEO Matter in Thanet?

Search engines can be considered the prime visitor and it is their perception of your site and the topics it covers that influence your sites overall position in the search results. When you created your site you probably gave little thought to the HTML tags you used other than the pleasing end result in your browser (or if you are smarter each browser you tested).

To a search engine or a blind person's screen readers <b> is just for presentation but <strong> means that the words are slightly more important than the rest. To you, however, they both make the text bold. Why does this mater?

Let us take for example our imaginary book seller and local blogger Tony Flaig. Imagine that his blog (Big News Margate) was quoted in the papers as having the best ideas ever for making Margate better.

You can bet a lot of people would want to look at the blog. They would probably type variations of the phrase "Big News Margate" into the search engine of their choice. At the moment you should find Tony's blog at the top of the listing for this topic.

Why? BNM is currently the top of the listing because the engines see Big News Margate as being the most relevant site for the combination of words Big and News and Margate. There is no reason why our imaginary book seller could not have a go at changing this for some personal gain.

What if he were to write about "The Big News for Margate" and tell the world that the most important thing to do was to buy his books. If he can get ahead of Tony, even for a few weeks, while everyone is searching then he will get all the visitors and probably sell a lot of books. It would not be his reputation selling them but he would be the one getting the reward care of some neat SEO skills.

How can this happen?

As I said before, the search engine is your prime visitor so it pays to be crystal clear what each page is about and how it relates to other pages. If our imaginary book salesman removes all barriers to the search engines understanding that his page is about Big News in Margate then he might enjoy a better search results position. This would go doubly if the real Big News Margate had less than perfect clarity (weak SEO).

Admittedly content is the biggest part of this SEO picture but other factors do play a part.

For example: imagine if you could dominate for "Used Cars in Thanet", "No Win No Fee Solicitors, Margate", "Thanet News" or any other highly focused keyword grouping for your business and location. You would get the lions share (around 90%) of all searchers coming to your website.

I hope it does not take a genius to understand that this would mean a massive boost to your bottom line. More cash for your cash flow. Even when in a recession economy.

Hopfuly I have whetted you appetite for the subject and show you how SEO can directly impact on your level of readership, sales, subscription rate and even online reputation. In future articles I intend to cover more specific aspects of this topic and show how Thanet could easily dominate the Kent and even London scene for online sales.

If you want to know more right now then don't forget Thanet Star's Partner: SEO Book.