Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing a website so that it performs well in organic search in search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the common nomenclature for Search Engine Optimization, and it refers to the marketing tactics used by businesses in an effort to gain “natural” traffic from search results on major search engines.

The major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing use special algorithms to determine the relevancy of a search, making it easy for users to find exactly what they are looking for on the first page of searching. The more relevant a result is, the higher up it will list on the page.

SEO is part of a natural system that advertisers do not have to pay for in order to take a part of it. Rather than an advertisement campaign, search engine optimization is a strategy that advertisers can use to keep up with the natural trends of the Internet in order to become more relevant in search results. Becoming more relevant with search results will allow the business to gain more traffic naturally, rather than having to pay for more customers.

All the Details

The reason SEO is so important is because search engines are the primary method of traffic for most Internet users. Everyone navigates through a major search engine like Google or Bing, which will take them to whatever results they have searched for.

In order to optimize your business’ search engine results, you have to ensure that you are implementing the correct keywords and phrases that match what users use in their search queries. There is more than enough proof to show that a company’s search engine placement can make or break their chances of success.

Search engines determine relevancy based on a few major things:

  • Popularity of the site – How much traffic does it have? How often are people visiting it? The bigger the site, the more likely it is to show up near the top of a search engine page.
  • Relevance of the site – Does the site hit all of the keywords that the user searched for?
  • Algorithms used by the engine – When it comes down to it, a search engine will use a special algorithm to sort relevance and then to rank websites by popularity.

Advice from Google

Google has provided some “webmaster guidelines” to help businesses achieve better search engine optimization. This is a great way to naturally bring in a lot of traffic, and is a powerful tool on the Internet that can help companies rise high in their success.

Some advice from these Google masters include:

  • Websites should be made for users, not for search engines. Don’t stuff it full of keywords and indexing factors that would be uninteresting for the user.
  • Use a lot of text links in your website. Link to other pages within your site.
  • Make sure your URLs contain useful and friendly keywords.
  • Make sure your site is full of relevant information, and use the correct ALT tags to sort the information more accurately.

Although the algorithms of Google, Bing, and Yahoo work differently, and different guidelines may apply to each of them, it is still good to keep in mind the basics of how SEO works and how to promote healthier SEO for a growing business.