A Basic Look at SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the art of making small changes to your website in order to make it rank higher in search engines. The idea is not to pull a fast-one on search engines, but to make it easy for them to see your site and index it, so that when someone searches for what you’re offering in Google or Yahoo!, your site pops up.

Why Does My Website Need SEO?

Your new website can be positively stunning, with high-quality products offered at affordable prices. But if no one knows about it, what’s the use? Yes, it is entirely possible to have a successful website that gains traffic from sources other than search engines (i.e. offline advertising, links from social networks, e-mail marketing, etc.) This is why SEO is merely a subset of marketing; it should not be your entire marketing plan.

That said, SEO can be an excellent way to boost the traffic of any website. Make a website that is indexed up by search engines, and  attract new visitors who previously didn’t know you or your company existed.SEO is also great for enhancing brand credibility. Visitors trust sites that readily appear in search results.

Building a Website that is Search-Engine Friendly

There are many ways to make your web pages easily fed to the search engines. Thankfully, the basic principles of SEO are pretty universal.

Search engines index webpages with robots called “spiders”, to understand what that web page is about. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for these spiders to know what your webpage is about. That way, the search engine will “index” your site, and show it to users who search for terms related to your site.

SEO can be generally categorized into 5 different aspects. You should use a combination of these tactics to optimize your site:

Using Keywords

Brainstorm for words or phrases that an online user may search for in Google that would lead him or her to your website. These are words related to your site’s content, and do not necessarily include the name of your business or website. You should have 5-7 main keywords for small to mid-sized sites.There are many online keyword research tools that show you the most widely used search terms based on your site’s content, such as Google AdWords and SEO Book.

Search engine friendly site development

Develop your site so search engines can easily crawl and index your pages. This is done with clear site navigation, or pages that readily link to one another with HTML hyperlinks. Sitemaps, or a page with links to all of your pages, can significantly help search engines (and visitors) navigate your website. Upload a sitemap to your site, and submit it to search engines.

SEO-Optimized Content

Your keywords should be built into several parts of your website, including on-page content such as text and headers.Do not stuff keywords into your site, and be sure that the surrounding content relates to your keywords. Most free website builders include settings options that allow you to add keyword-rich titles and meta-tags.

Building Links

Links to your site from other sites can be very powerful in terms of boosting your site’s rank in search engines. Getting others to link to you can be achieved in a number of ways, the most basic of which is to create quality content that others will want to link to. Each time an external site links to you, it’s as if you are gaining a vote of confidence in the eyes of Google. Links from popular sites are more valuable than links from say your best friend’s obscure blog.

Track Your Site Analytics

Track what’s been working and what hasn’t and use the information to continue to improve your SEO efforts. See how much traffic you’re receiving from search engines and other sources. See what keywords are actually driving traffic to your site, and which are the most popular. Gain this type of information through Google Analytics, an easy tool to set up that gives you all the information you’d need as a budding webmaster to track your site’s SEO stats.

If you have yet to make your own website, start brainstorming for words or groups of words that an online user might enter into a search engine, that relate to your site’s content.This can help you to define your target market, and can inform decisions you’ll make later on about your site’s content and site development.

Overview

Now that you have a firm grasp on the building blocks of SEO, it is important that you understand that SEO is a process and not a one-time deal You cannot fully optimize your site in a day, or even a month. You make the changes you can make, and measure your results. Then you continue to improve your site’s performance in search engines.

Make sure you remember that your true goal is to create a website for humans and not search engines.Google can tell when you’re changing your site for its purposes alone – and will hold this against you. Stick to the basics outlined in this article, and don’t get too wrapped-up in the details. It’s always best to KISS. Keep It Simple, Stupid.

For a deeper look at the topics discussed here, check out SEOMoz and Google’s SEO blogs.   

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