Search engine optimization (Seo) is yet to be fully embraced by Kenya businesses, as one way of online marketing. Paid search engine marketing is no doubt more popular with local companies than seo. But what really is Seo? What are benefits of optimizing your website and what does it involve?
Website has become a very important tool for every business nowadays. So the moment you have your company website running, you think you are done, right? Wrong! Getting customers and potential customers to visit your site is the hardest part. The success of any website is significantly dependent on the type of visitors your website gets. If you sell cars, you really don’t need people looking for jobs in your site. They simply will not buy anything from you. What you need is people looking to buy cars, right?
The question is: how do you get people looking for what you sell to your website? There are probably hundreds, thousands or even millions of sites selling the same products/services like you do. Millions of internet users all over the world are using search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and Bing, to get information or products of their interest.
This is where search engine optimization comes in. You have a website, but no people seem to be visiting it. And by the people, I mean customers you are targeting to reach. For instance, your company sells cars in Kenya. Your goal here is to get people intending to buy cars to your site. So you ask yourself: what terms (keywords) are they using in search engines? You go ahead and conduct search for following keywords in Google: “buy car in Kenya”, “car sale Kenya”, “car buying”, “cheap cars Kenya” among others. And then to your disappointment, you realize what? That your website is not showing in the first page of search engines result pages (SERPs), for your business keywords. This ‘unfortunate’ realization subsequently gets you to start wondering how you can have your website beat your competitors’ on SERPs. And then you hear something called ‘SEO’.
In simple terms, search engine optimization is the continuous practice of getting a web site to rank high in search engines result pages for relevant keywords. The main aim of optimizing website is to increase targeted traffic from search engines. Making a web page to rank for specific keyword, involves having a good site architecture, optimizing web content, link building among others.
If potential clients can’t find your website, then one thing is crystal clear- they are landing to your competitors’ websites. That consequently means that you are losing business or simply put- your website is not making you money. Instead it’s costing you!
With good seo experts, you can turn things around. Dominating high traffic keywords in your niche is a sure way to get people looking for what you offer, to your website. Search engine optimization is indeed a very efficient and cost-effective internet marketing method to reach more customers and make more sales. Kenya businesses, both small and big should therefore consider investing in seo, as long-term online marketing strategy.
