What is SEO?
Piggybacking off some of the responses I am getting to my other project...
http://www.ideaoffer.com/projects/businessguy/how-important-are-blogs-really.html
People are mentioning SEO -- search engine optimization -- and how important it is. I have heard this from a lot of people, but the more I ask about it or try to research it the more it seems like witchcraft.
Who can summarize it for the layman? Who can refer me to some good sources on how to become an expert on it?
Let's say that you want to make a website, but you want to be searchable via search engines. If you use specific keyword phrases, you can potentially end up at the top of the search results. I have read that although sponsored advertisements on google sometimes get hits, many people gravitate towards "organic" search results, for eample, on google, these would be the websites that are not sponsored. Whatever you want your website, blog, or articles to be about, you will want to use keywords that will get you in the search results. For example, if you were going to write about working with homeless people with co-occurring mental disorders in Detroit, Michigan, you would not want to just use the keyword "Detroit" because you'd be buried in the search engines, however if you were to be more specific and use phrases that people search for that relates to your topic, you can virtually make yourself an expert with whatever subject you please. My advice to you and anyone who reads through this...whatever you want your website to be about, you need to check out google.com's "keyword tool" and you will be able to find keywords that are searchable by monthly volume in your locale and globally. For example, if you type in "Detroit" you will get other related phrases, if you check for "Detroit homelessness" you will get a different set of results. You want to pick keywords that have enough traffic to make whatever you are doing worthwhile, but not high volume keywords for SEO that will bury you in search results. Good luck! I know when I found this out, a lightbulb went off in my head. Hope it helps.
What was asked of me would be to research and write 6-8 page articles on topics such as the merits and creation of stainless steel metal bolts. Granted, it was interesting to research but often there just wasn't enough information available to write more than 2 pages at best.
SEO used to be based around keywords which can still play a part however inbound links, good outbound links, social networking, posting on forums and so on will increase your search engine presence. It can be done by the webmaster and you certainly don't need to spend a fortune paying someone to do it for you.
http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf
Also, keep in mind the growth of the mobile Internet and make sure your site is optimised for iPhones, etc.
Hope that helps.
Let's say Your Website is Your Store Downtown. Real Nice place, you've got a nice BIG sign outside telling people The Name of your Business, inside are all the Great Products you sell nicely organized on shelves. You have everything setup exactly as you want it, you already told all of your friends and family to come check it out. Problem is, your only getting the odd customer into your store! Because you Didn't Advertise!!
That is the Equivalent to not doing Search Engine Optimization!
By Choosing Keywords that are Suited to your Site, Labeling Pages (Titles) Descriptively and Laying out your entire Site in a manner that is Search Engine FRIENDLY, you Quadruple (or more) the chances of Your Website actually coming up in the Results of a search! Not to mention, you will save a great deal of Money on Advertising in Search Engines because your not relying solely on your AD to be seen for people to take notice. Depending on a persons search terms, your site could potentially be on the First Page of results found.
In Closing, SEO is like putting your AD out there for everyone to see!
IE: Yellow Pages, Local Paper, TV, Radio, Billboards, etc.
SEO stands for Search engine optimisation, and it essentially the process of getting your website ranked highly in the search engines for specific keyword terms.
For example, if you were to run a website selling beds, you would probably want to rank highly for a term such as "Double beds" or "Double beds UK delivery"
The theory obviously being, you'd get more targeted vistors, from being ranked for these keywords, than otherwise.
The first step involves finding relevant keywords you can rank for. This step is pretty easy and requires a quick look at the google keyword tool. (Used for adwords, but the results correlate pretty nicely. Simply type in your keyword, and you'll get related keywords as well as the number of searches they get per month.
Once you've found some keywords you'd like to rank for you have to go about increasing your "google love".
Noone knows the google algorithm for getting ranked, but some of the factors are pretty well known, and it's these we need to play on in order to get ranked for our keywords.
The main ones are, relevance, popularity, and quality.
And we can increase these through 2 main ways.
On page SEO, and Off page SEO.
On page factors are the easiest, they involve adding things such as meta tags, and coding up with proper html standards, so google can view and judge our site more easily. As well as having very specific relevant qulaity content. If you google "On page SEO", you'll get all the info you need.
Off page SEO is the bulk of the magic though, and requires the most time and effort.
It plays on quality popularity and relevance. And relies mainly on gaining one-way backlinks (links to your site, without you linking to theirs), to demonstrate popularity, whilst also coming from a quality source (demonstrating your site is reputable enough to be linked), along with specific link text (known as anchor text), that shows your site is incredibly relevant to the keyterm.
For example going back to our beds example earlier, a one-way backlink from bedreviews.com, with a link from a product review with the link text "Double beds", would look extremely favourable in the eyes of google.
It's all about getting quality, relevant backlinks and making sure your site is what google is looking for.
Google "on page seo" and "Off page seo" for more info.
Hope that helps.
http://www.seomastering.com/
http://www.filestube.com/33a8076a3e97d7e103e9,g/The-Art-of-SEO-Mastering-SEO-1st-Edition-2010.html
http://www.measuring-up.com/seo-tutorial/seo-tutorial.html
some of them are
http://www.conductor.com/
www.seomoz.com
http://www.seobook.com/
I work full time in marketing and I work closely with our SEO team. Search Engine Optimization can be explained pretty easily:
It's basically using key words that have high search rates in search engines such as Google on your websites in order to attract a higher volume of viewers.
Our SEO team runs reports weekly on our company websites to see where the traffic is coming from and which key words were used in search engines to lead them to us.
Companies that are Internet savvy typically will have a SEO team in place, because this helps ensure that their website will come up at the top of the list or at least on the 1st page of a search engine.
I hope this helps!
Good luck :-)