In our business, there is a tendency to jump into the deep end of SEO without covering the basics. To avoid making that mistake, let's start off with what is SEO?
First off, SEO is an abbreviation of the phrase search engine optimization. In fact, the entire process of SEO is full of a wide variety of abbreviations because that tends to be the nature of the web and those that work on it. You'll probably read about SERPS for instant. SERPS simply means Search Engine Results Page Position, to wit, where you show up in the rankings for a particular keywords search. At this point, just understand what SEO stands for is probably sufficient.
So, what is SEO? It is the art and process of positioning your site to rank highly on the search engines. There are many factors that go into this process and each search engine uses a different mathematical formula to evaluate sites. This formula is updated from time-to-time, which means you can be number 3 for a major keyword today and number 303 tomorrow if you fail to properly interpret a change to the ranking formulas being used.
A quick word about search engines. There are literally thousands of search engines. Regardless of what you think, use or have heard, only three really matter - Google, Yahoo and MSN. Google controls the most traffic on the web with Yahoo running a distant second and MSN even further behind. If you want a lot of people to visit your site, you really have to try to get ranked on Google and Yahoo above all else.
There are a number of factors that go into SEO and getting ranked highly on the major search engines. They include things such as the code being used on your site [Flash is disfavored], the amount and type of text used, the number of times a keyword phrase appears on a page, link counts and so on. The trick with SEO is to balance these factors to produce high rankings for a site.
In global terms, SEO is the act and art of getting as many pages of a site ranked on the first page of results returned for certain pages on Google and Yahoo. Once these rankings are obtained, the rankings produce free traffic to the site for as long as the rankings remain. Google can be a bit twitchy, but Yahoo usually is very stable.
What is SEO? It is a fundamental part of the marketing plan of any online site interested in long-term success. |
