More than often, we have our prospective clients ask us common questions about online marketing/Internet marketing/SEO.

In an attempt to spread the awareness about these commonly asked questions, I will try and answer some of these below:

Q. What is SEO?
Ans.: SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a continuous process involving various activities and refinement of the website to further improve its chances of being ranked in the top results of a search engine (e.g. Google, Yahoo, MSN, Lycos etc.) when a relevant search is undertaken.

Q. Why SEO?
Ans.: Some facts:

  • Britons are spending more time on the Internet than on any other media including television, newspapers, radio etc. – A study by Google
  • 96% of US manufacturers have a website – SEO is one of their hottest tools to market themselves.
  • 93% of all Internet traffic is generated by the search engines out of which 89% are first time visitors
  • 65% of the revenue is transacted from the top 3 ranks on the major search engines.

    • Q. Why is SEO expensive?
    Ans.: The price for a service or product is directly proportional to the effort involved. There is a lot of effort that goes into SEO and thus the prices are relatively high.

    Q. When will I get to see the results?
    Ans. It depends on various factors, some of which are:

  • Your industry/competition
  • Selected keywords
  • Your competition
  • The domain age

    • Typically, you should start seeing the effect within 6 months of your campaign start.

    Q. What are the guarantees?
    Ans.: There are no guarantees simply because it is not possible to pre-estimate the ever-changing algorithms of various search engine crawlers. Additionally, as the awareness about SEO is increasing by the day, more and more people are trying to reach the top slots on various search engines – your competition is no different.
    On a side note, please stay away from anybody who guarantees a given rank – the mere fact that someone is guaranteeing a rank/position is warrant enough to trust that they are not a good provider.

    With the ever increasing number of Internet users, it does make sense to consider SEO as one of the media to market yourselves.