Ever heard of an exabyte? If you are somewhat an online fundi or just have an in-depth general knowledge then you will know that an exabyte is a really, really long number – something like a gigabyte, except a billion times longer. In numerical terms, an exabyte is known as being one quintillion (how amazing is this word?) bytes long and looks like this: 1000000000000000000 B.

 

So what does this have to do with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?

 

The point I’m trying to drive home is that the internet is an incredibly massive place that stores an incomprehensible amount of information recorded in exabytes. To put it into perspective: Data Scientist Kirk Borne explains that the amount of data generated from the dawn of time up to 2002 is recorded around the five exabyte mark. As this big data phenomenon took off, the numbers have become mind blowing. In 2011, it took about two days for the world to create the same five exabytes of data that it took humans eons to generate. In 2013, it took the world just 10 minutes to create five exabytes!

 

The above paragraph illustrates the importance of SEO in that the internet is a huge place and if your website has not been through rigorous SEO treatment, it is very likely to become sucked into a big black hole of information and rendered insignificant.

 

SEO is made up three important factors: content, keywords and competitors. It is a process where one edits their website content to a state where major search engines, namely Google, will pick it up. In this instance, content is king..

 

Most SEO processes are organic, ie: you cannot pay Google to rank your website at number one on a search list. Organic SEO entails constructing and amending your website content so that it will be picked up by major search engines using a clever selection of keywords, meta-tags and descriptions, incoming and outgoing links as well as intelligent URL and webpage architecture.

 

As per the Google SEO guide, here are some important tips to help with your SEO campaign:

 

1. Create unique, accurate page titles

2. Make good use of meta tag descriptions

3. Improve the structure of your webpage URLs

4. Make your site easier to navigate

5. Offer quality content and services

6. Write better anchor / link text

7. Optimise your use of images

8. Use heading tags appropriately

9. Make effective use of “robots.txt”

10. Notify Google if your site is a mobile site

 

The Webhouse Group offers stringent SEO processes when constructing and quality checking our client’s websites and realise that in this technological age it is a vital part of the package we offer.

 

Thanks for taking the time to read this and hope this post has helped you to understand the basics and importance of SEO.