This month sees the start of a free online SEO course provided by Needmoreclicks.com based in Doncaster.
We'll be taking you through the world of website optimisation step by step and the information in this column will be supplemented by a video blog on the website - www.needmoreclicks.com

To kick the series off, we going to ask a pretty fundamental question and although it's a basic one it's one you really need to get right...

What is SEO and why do we need it?

Odds are that if you run a website or are looking at getting one and especially if you're a business owner you'll have heard about this thing called SEO.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation and all it means is getting more visibility for your website which in turn leads to more clicks, more visits to your website and more enquiries.

More visibility means that your website appears higher in the Google rankings (or any Search Engine) for that matter and the higher you appear the more clicks you'll get on your listing in the search results.

Many of the business owners we deal with have been plagued at one time or other by slick telesales based companies selling them SEO services but without giving them any education about what's involved and more importantly what can be expected in terms of results.

Did you know, that on average, position 1 on Google gets a whopping 42% of all the clicks for that particular search term? This is one of the reasons that everyone wants to be number 1!

But be careful with chasing top spot, its fairly likely that those in the top spots have been optimising for longer than you, so it'll take time for you to catch up, in fact, depending where you're starting from, you may decide that catching up is pretty difficult, in which case look for other terms to rank for (more on how to do this later in the series).

So to recap, if you're a website owner you'll have heard about SEO, the key question is what you do about it. As we've discussed the higher your search position the better, more visibility means more clicks and over the coming weeks we'll talk you through how to get it.

Andy Roberts

For more information go to www.needmoreclicks.com