SEO is one of the most important pieces of web-related jargon; yet if you’re new to having your own website, you may not even yet be aware of what this term means. No doubt you’ve already seen this abbreviation (and it is an abbreviation) more times than you can count and at the very least, you’ve certainly heard that it’s important – but what is it, exactly and how is it done? If you’re in the dark about SEO, you’ve come to the right place. Keep reading for a brief rundown of the SEO basics.
SEO is an abbreviated form of the phrase search engine optimization. SEO is something of an umbrella term, referring to any of a number of techniques which are intended to make websites easier for people to find via Google and other search engines. Since the vast majority of web users use search engines to find whatever it is they’re looking for online, having your website show up as high as possible in the list of search results provided by the search engines is everything in terms of bringing visitors into your site.
Most people (and this probably includes those of you reading this right now) don’t look past the first page or two of search results – perhaps three at most. It’s rare that anyone digs deeper into the search results than this, which is why SEO is so important to the success of your site. If yours is a business oriented site, then coming to grips with search engine optimization is an absolute must. Even if you have a purely personal site, it’s still a good idea to implement some SEO techniques unless you really don’t care if anyone visits your site.
The basis of most SEO techniques is keywords – these are the search terms that people enter into search engines when they’re looking for something; and using the right keywords in the right places in your website’s content and in the HTML code (namely, the meta tags for your site) does a couple of very important things. First, this tells the search engines what your site is about. Secondly, using the right keywords tells the search engines that your site is relevant to these terms and should be included in the results for searches which use these terms.
You’ll often get the best results from your SEO efforts by using what are called long tail keywords; these are longer phrases which tend to be more specific. For instance, “Swiss chocolate with caramel” instead of simply “chocolate”. You’ll want to do some research on different keywords to find out which ones you may want to use for your own site.
Other than the use of keywords and phrases, there are other methods of improving your page ranking in the search engines which fall under the umbrella of SEO, most notably link building. Search engines use a variety of different criteria to evaluate the relevance and importance of websites – one of which is the number of links from other sites which point to your own.
There is a lot more to SEO than there’s room to discuss here today, but these are the basics which you’ll need to know to get off to a good start – and get your website climbing up the page rankings to become more visible, get more visitors and if you’re selling something, increase sales.