What is SEO – Search Engine Optimization?
According to Wikipedia:
“Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results for targeted keywords.”
Wow! That’s a mouthful, huh?
I’ve always said that it’s a search engine’s (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.) job to present their visitors with the most relevant results to their search queries. When you go to Google and type in the search term “cheap red widgets” it’s Google’s job to return the websites/pages that are about cheap red widgets … in the order of relevancy.
So, in order to “improve the volume and quality of traffic” to our websites we will need to search engine optimize our websites … more specifically our web pages.
For the purposes of this article I am going to refer to Google as our “search engine.” After all, they are the largest and the most powerful. By last count they receive over 8 times as much traffic as their closest competitor, Yahoo.
Google uses various different criteria for deciding which web pages are the most relevant to each search term. No one knows for sure exactly what Google uses to determine the relevancy of each term, but SEO experts can give us some idea of what Google likes to see (and doesn’t like to see). These “experts” are constantly testing and re-testing sites and pages to see what will help or hinder their ability to come back as a relevant page for a particular search term. When it comes to SEO, nobody can “prove” cause and effect, but they can say certain factors seem to effect rankings.
Why don’t we know exactly what Google is looking for? Because there will always be those who try to manipulate the search results. Google’s theory is if you concentrate on building a quality website that is valuable to your visitors then the search engines will figure out what your page is about and give you “credit’ for doing so.
So, now that we know what SEO … or search engine optimization is … let’s get busy learning about how to successfully optimize our sites.
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