What Is SEO?
If you’re doing business on the Internet, SEO is an acronym you should know and understand. The letters stand for search engine optimization, which probably doesn’t tell you a whole lot more than the letters. In a nutshell, SEO is the art of designing and modifying web pages that will be noticed and indexed by the major search engines so that when a prospective customer uses a search engine like Google, Yahoo or MSN to find a product that you sell, your web site comes up at the top of the list of sites that provide it. It’s a complex mix of balancing the various factors that influence how highly the major search engines rank your web site. To understand it, you need to understand what happens when someone uses a search engine to find something on the internet.
How Search Engines Work
While there are several different kinds of search engine, and they’re always developing, the basic principles behind search engines are the same. The search engine maintains a database of web pages that is indexed in some way. Those databases may be compiled from lists submitted, or they may be added by an automatic ‘spider’ that crawls through the internet from link to link sending copies of every page that it visits back to its home.
Let’s say that you’re looking for information on red widgets. You go to a search engine and type ‘red widgets’ into the search box. The search engine dips down to search through its database to find all the pages it’s indexed that contain the words ‘red widgets’ – but that’s just the first part of the process. Next the search engine tries to guess which of those pages contain the most useful information for you, and put those pages up at the top of the list. The programs that help decide which of the search engine results are most relevant to your query use mathematical algorithms to help make their determination. Those algorithms are technically closely guarded secrets, but it’s easy to figure out most of the factors that are part of the equation. Those factors include keywords, keyword density, keyword location, incoming links and outgoing links.
The art of search engine optimization is far more than just knowing what the search engines are looking for. It also includes understanding how the search engines index pages, and why others link to your pages. SEO includes understanding how to set up a web site so that the search engines can find all the information that you’ve put on it. An SEO company will know the difference between organic listing and pay-per-click marketing, and be able to recommend when to use each and why. Navigation, dynamic pages, search engine friendly URLs – even things as simple as putting ALT tags on all your graphics – should all be part of an SEO strategy that will get your web site noticed – and recommended – by the search engines.
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