SEO: are you considering it as a marketing tool?

In addition to this, live tracking tools allow site owners to monitor site visitors, cost per conversion and click-through rates to their site with a click of a button.

It is true that in a world where everything has become “instant”, there is a new reality that people do not have the patience to wait for results anymore. We have become used to and are expecting to see immediate results. This expectancy has shifted over to online advertising. Website owners not only want instant visitors by using the quickest methods possible, but they want to see results and conversions and they want to also track the effectiveness of their campaigns, all at the same time.

For this very reason, they seldom look at long-term solutions and never think of the value that copywritten content or optimised website pages offer them for the long term. Search engine optimisation is probably one of the least thought-of methods to use for online marketing. It is a very effective, proven way of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Even though it takes more patience it will deliver the desired results.

As a case study, digital marketing and strategic consultancy agency longtail showed that search engine optimisation can be effective and obtaining that No 1 ranking position on the search engine results pages is not as difficult as most people think.

Several months ago longtail was tasked with optimising the Homemakers Online website that was developed by a third party web development company. Initially when the project was handed over there was little, if any, optimisation done on the site. One of the most important keyword terms identified in joint meetings between longtail and Homemakers was “home improvement”. It was decided that this keyword phrase and variations thereof would be one of the main focus points of longtail's search engine optimisation efforts. When longtail started in April 2008, the Homemakers Online website ranked 79th in the search for “home improvement” via google.co.za.

By applying off-site and on-site SEO techniques, the website ranks Number 1 on google.co.za for the keyword “home improvement” in just four months. This was one of the main goals set forward in the strategy longtail presented to Homemakers and was achieved in much less time than originally planned. In addition to the Number 1 ranking the site has had over 32,000 visitors each spending an average of five minutes on the site since April 2008. Several secondary keywords have also shot up the ranking since the search engine optimisation activities have commenced, increasing visitors to the site.

What can we learn from this? Search engine optimisation works when applied correctly and the key is that it needs to be applied in a transparent way with no shortcuts taken. It will increase the amounts of traffic to your site but it's important that both the search engine and site visitors benefit from your optimised website.