What Does SEO Do For You? Online Offline Comparison
Why do you need to consider SEO when devising a plan for online marketing? One way to describe the ultimate importance is to do a comparison to an offline business.
For this, consider someone who owns a dress shop. We’ll say it’s Nancy’s Dress Shop.
Imagine this. Nancy has a small little dress shop located in the midwest situated on the outskirts (terrible pun) of town. Nancy has just renovated an old building and her shop has just opened for business. It is on a road not well traveled. The shop is absolute stunning inside, she has a wide variety of offerings, and is fully stocked up. But who knows she exists?
In the offline world, Nancy is faced with the issue – how does she get traffic to her little dress store? How will anyone ever find her?
One of the first things she might consider doing is calling up her friend Joy to come by and see her new store. This of course would be considered “word of mouth” advertising. While Joy will buy something from Nancy, she will need to sell more than one or two dresses to stay in business. Nancy needs to get some permanent signs or advertising locally or in the neighboring towns to get the word out that she is open for business. Nancy might do well to get herself listed in the local yellow pages. She might have to put in some money for some highway signs in a more trafficed area. She may also have to give out some free samples to create a buzz.
Now imagine that Nancy has magically found a way to put up signs in all 50 states about her little dress shop and what kinds of things she has to offer. Everywhere you turn around, you see Nancy’s being advertised over and over again. Do you think she might get a few calls? You need a dress – and there you see immediately that Nancy has them.
Online is no different with the exception that advertising and the driving of traffic to you site can be much more cost effective. The more search engine optimization you create, the less and less you pay for advertising. Online, Nancy has the opportunity to associate her name with her products over and over again. The more she does it, the more visibility and traffic she can achieve. SEO is like putting up signs all over the place about what you have and where to find it.
So what does SEO entail?
Like Nancy, you need to create your list of items you have to offer or what it is you want to be known for. Your next step is to simply start dropping those signs all over.
- article marketing
- blogging
- web 2.0 properties
- video
- online directories
- social networking sites
These are all great places to drop your message which ultimately point back to your site. The more you do the more people you can reach.
In addition, the ultimate benefit is if your SEO is done correctly, search engines like Google and Yahoo will take notice and give you a boost in their general search engine rankings.
No matter what niche you pursue, it is imperative that SEO considerations be explored and implemented in your final marketing plan.
Originally posted 2009-09-21 14:01:30. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
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