Successful web marketing, wherever you're based

Living in South Africa, it's easy to think that any business you run will necessarily be behind the eight-ball when it comes to global competition. This might have been the case for most of history, but, all other things being equal, online marketing and customer connection are great equalizers when it comes to modern business. Though we might fall into pre-web thinking from time to time, you've got to learn about and embrace the web tactics of today to realise that there's nothing holding you back but you.

Simple SEO software can be the difference between brand recognition and brand ignorance, at least on the part of your would-be customer base. For those still unsure about what SEO is all about, let's do a little primer. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a way of making sure that when a person on the internet searches for something related to your business, your business is what turns up at the top of their results.

But this is easier said than done. Most people don't have any idea how to achieve search results that are good for their own bottom line, and that's largely because Google doesn't tell us how their search algorithms work! What we know about how search results are gleaned are, in large part, determined by the research and trial/error performed by SEO sleuths all over the web. While we don't know the exact methods that Google uses to get its customers the most relevant information, we know quite a lot, even though these methods are constantly changing.

For one, Google searches a great deal of text. As much as we like to think of the internet as a visual medium, the written word is still the primary way by which people ingest information. So in spite of all of the videos and images, text is still the easiest and fastest way for an algorithm to take in information.

Algorithms search all over the web, reading articles and sites, but usually only digging down through the earliest text, not the deepest stuff. Here, if the algorithms find search terms identical or related to the search term put into the engine by a user, this site will be included in the results. If many different phrases link to a single page, this is seen as a link with authority, so even though it might have the same phrases that are found on other sources, the fact that it is central to so much other traffic will mean that Google prioritises over a search term instance that occurs in relative isolation.

Keyword text is important, and so is the location of a piece of material. The more a piece of written content is accessed (providing the keywords are written in it), the more authority that Google will give to it. However, too much concentration of relevant text will seem like an SEO grab to the algorithms, and will therefore not be listed as prominently. Diversity and frequency are the key in the ever-changing search for better search engine optimisation.

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