The Importance of SEO - Search Engine Optimization

While you neglect SEO your competitors are getting further ahead.

A guest post by Ben Hook, director of Navaro, a Warwickshire SEO company.

Far too often search engine optimization is not given the respect it deserves when it comes to allocating a businesses time and budget, and it often gets pushed back being deemed as "something to work on tomorrow".

In this post I want to explain a few of the advantages of getting ahead of your competitors when it comes to SEO, and how quickly these can become disadvantages if the competition starts implementing it before you.

Ranking well for a term will often get you referenced

One of the most important factors when it comes to search engine rankings is gaining high quality inbound links to your site, as these are seen as votes, or references for your site. By ranking well for your target phrases you are also putting yourself in front of anyone who is looking to create any kind of reference article for your target topic.

For example, say you run a website on car maintenance and you rank on the first page for the term. Anyone who is looking to create an article about the best car maintenance websites is bound to be using a search engine to do the research, meaning they will most likely come across your website. Situations like this often result in you gaining a reference that otherwise wouldn't have materialized had the website ranked on page two or three.

People are more likely to link to authoritative sites

Ranking number one for your target phrase doesn't only drive a lot of relevant and targeted traffic, but it also helps to increase trust in your brand, meaning that articles and posts you publish are more likely to be referenced across the web, helping to secure and improve on the rankings you have already attained.

Links get better with age

Older links are seen as more authoritative and trustworthy, as they tend to display the characteristics of naturally given links. One of the paid characteristics of paid links is their tendency to appear and disappear, hence making the old links seem more trusted and genuine.

Over time, the amount of weight that links pass tends to increase due to a number of factors, including the page the link is placed on gaining more links and making the page more important.

So stop putting your SEO off, you may have noticed your competitors outranking you, or may already have the number one spot and noticed your competitors getting closer all the time, either way your site needs to be worked on constantly to ensure you get to the top, and stay there.