SEO Search Engine Optimization in South Africa for your Website

If you have a product or service that is being marketed on the Internet there are only two possible reasons for web failure:

1. There is no need for your product or service.

2. Your website is not being found by the people likely to be buying your product or service.

Think of your offline searches for products and services. Ever used the Yellow Pages?

Just what is the Yellow Pages?

It is a collection of businesses advertising their products or services in a structured organised directory of similar businesses competing for similar products or services.

As far as a business is concerned is this a good thing? Or is it a case that if your business is not listed in the Yellow Pages then it stands no chance of being seen by a potential customer?

The Internet carries similar analogies to the Yellow Pages. There are numerous directories on the Internet listing numerous businesses. The trouble is that the Internet is much larger than any Yellow Pages book.

It is reason number 2 listed above that lies at the heart of web site success. This is the key of Search Engine Optimisation.

At the heart of search engine optimisation is the fact that over 80% of all traffic generated by websites is as a result of search engine referrals.

This is so important to understand that quite possibly it is the most important point that is made on this website. It cannot be stressed enough!

What this means is that your website will attract traffic if search engines refer your website to searchers. More dramatically, if your website is not referred by search engines, then you are missing on about 80% of the potential traffic you would otherwise generate.

Google alone served over 2 billion searches in March 2005. This is a largely meaningless figure it is so large but it will become even larger as the number of websites competing for the same customers climbs correspondingly higher.

Yet the vast majority of websites in South Africa perform very badly on the four key search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves). 'The Big Four' are really the only significant search engines on the Internet that count. Between them they completely dominate all searches, and the other remaining few searches are generally undertaken by a much smaller local search engine that is using the technology of one of the Big Four under license or some other arrangement.

So why is is that the search engine performance of so many South African websites is so poor?

In truth there are many reasons. Internet development in South Africa has undoubtedly been held back by high adoption costs owing to the telecommunications regime that is still in force in the country. But this is changing and rapidly so.

There is no discrimination against South African websites by search engines. Some South African websites are featured prominently on Google searches - and these sites enjoy great success of reaching their target market at no cost.

It comes down to basic know how and expertise. Search Engine Optimisation is a skill that can either be learned or it can be accessed through specialist ethical companies.