The Definition of SEO

January 12, 2009 · Filed Under Uncategorized · 3 Comments 

Most people know what SEO is yet they don’t understand exactly how SEO is important to their website.  I probably notice this the most with businesses who don’t immerse themselves online.

The nuts and bolts of SEO is the process of getting your website to the top of a search engine results page for your keywords of choice that can drive targeted traffic to your website. Targeted traffic being website visitors who are actually interested in your stuff and aren’t just out “browsing”.

Your keywords of choice are those words and phrases that people are typing into a search engine to find information on your website’s topic.

While that sounds pretty cut-and-dried, there are a hundred tiny details that go into getting a website in that prime location.  So let’s talk about what some of these tiny little details are exactly.

First, there’s two parts to SEO; on-page optimization and off-page optimization.

On-page optimization is the process of using your keywords that you have chosen for one of your web pages in strategic places throughout that page.  Note that I said “one of your web pages” not your “web site”.  Each web page within your entire website is ranked differently.  Each web page should be optimized for one or two keywords specifically related to the website topic.

So for instance if you were a store that sold tools, you would have a page optimized for hammers, another page optimized for saws, another page optimized for nails, and so on. All of the pages being part of the same “Tools” website.

Off-Page Optimization is the process of getting links pointing to your web pages.  A lot of people don’t consider off-page optimization part of SEO.  I completely disagree.  The point of optimizing your website for the search engines encompasses all factors.  What you do on your own site as well as what you do to promote that site since the promotion of that site will help you get better search engine rankings.

This off-page optimization is the most time-consuming task of SEO.  It’s the process of getting links to your site, yes, but they have to be the right kind of links; in the right neighborhoods not to mention those links have to have the ability to be seen by thousands of eyeballs that are interested in the information you’re providing. They must be located on pages related to your niche, they must have the right keyword anchor text and so, so much more.

So for those who were interested in what SEO was exactly, there you have it, in the most condensed form I could come up with.  SEO continues to change on a regular basis.  There’s always new strategies, new ideas, new search engine shakeups.  That’s why SEO is so important to the average website.  It’s an ever-evolving process that continues to change as the Internet grows.

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