You hired a web design company to create a website for your business. You were surprised when the representative asked you if you would want to get their services on SEO. You suddenly posed this question: “What is SEO?”
The Definition
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a powerful Internet marketing technique used to generate good website ranking from the organic results of the various search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and Bing, and to subsequently increase traffic. The competition is tough, however, because you will be fighting against billions of websites.
The Process
Search engine spiders craw billions of web pages through links and stop to find billions of interrelated documents. They interpret all the information and index them in enormous hard drives to be retrieved later when necessary in user queries. When the user begins his search by typing set of words into the query box, the search engine begins the process of comparing the search inquiry with those in the giant database. Because the information is too many, the calculation of relevancy takes place to ensure that the user will see only the data he requested. At this point, spiders look into the keyword density, links and metatags. If your site has been checked for relevancy and passed it, its content will be among those that will be for retrieval and will be placed in the search engine results pages. Now, if your SEO techniques are successful, your site will rank in the top five positions and will likely be visited.
Techniques Involved
These are two of the basic techniques in SEO:
- Optimizing the website for search
- Getting the attention of Google is not easy; you are up against billions of pages—but SEO can bring wonders through the following methods:
- Using keywords
- More often than not, when you ask “What is SEO?” the answers you get will point you to this one. The use of keywords, long tail keywords to be specific, will make it possible for your site to place higher in search engine rankings. Crawlers will index, process and check the relevancy of your site, and later on include you in the search engine results. If you are lucky, spiders will give you the top spot in the search engine results if the user entered exactly the same phrase in the search box and you are the only one who has that long tail keyword.
- Building links
- As mentioned above, spiders go from one link to another to index websites. As they see a number of links (regardless if they are internal or backlinks) that point to your website, they look at it as if they are trust votes; hence, they will likely rank your site higher.
- Getting the attention of Google is not easy; you are up against billions of pages—but SEO can bring wonders through the following methods:
- Creating and updating high quality content
- Site guests do not read content—they only scan it to determine if it carries the information they require. If they do not find anything useful, they leave instantly—and businesses lose the opportunity to sell. This is when SEO becomes important: SEO experts make sure that your site has quality content so the moment a user checks it they find something relevant and make the decision to stay and read more. They also continuously update it so Google and other search engines will keep coming back to your site.
The SEO and Your Business
SEO, as mentioned earlier, helps the company website improve its search engine ranking. As this happens, you will have a greater chance of increasing site traffic that often results to four things:
- Create market awareness
- Increase sales/Gain profit
- Promote stability
- Build a good reputation in the business circle
All these answered your question “What is SEO?” You then find enough reasons to invest in this marketing strategy.
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