What Is SEO?
Posted by Nik on Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Under: Beginners
There's no right, or wrong, place to start with SEO.
Which, for a
newbie, can make it all a little daunting. So let's see if we can't
break it all down a bit.
I guess the first thing we need to establish is what exactly SEO is. It is an acronym for Search Engine Optimisation, and is simply the "art" (he says, making himself sound all high faluting) of fine-tuning your website to ensure it places highly in search engines. Do not confuse this with having a lovely shiny website that potential customers fall in love with when they see it. That is all about design and functionality, which we will no doubt discuss at some later stage. SEO is much more to do with clearing the path to your front door.
Go to Google, or Yahoo, or Ask, or any search engine you want, and search for any term. As you no doubt know, what you get back is essentially a list of links. At the top of the page, and down the right hand side are the Pay Per Click (PPC) links which are there because someone has paid for them to be there. You can be there too, and we will be talking about PPC as this site develops. But there is no skill involved in appearing here. Just a deep wallet.
What we are interested in is the organic, or natural listings which make up the main body of the results page. Because Google (figures suggest that it has nearly 2/3 of the search engine market, so we will generally refer to Google throughout this site. Most of the information is relevant for all search engines however) is really rather clever, in ways that you and I will never truly understand, the results are presented in descending order of what Google thinks is relevant, with it's best match obviosuly being first. Google only lists 10 results per page by default, so being anywhere other than the first two or three pages is fairly redundant. Have you ever clicked beyond page three? So why would a potential visitor? SEO is therefore the manipulation of your site to ensure it gets in to that precious Top 20. No mean feat when you consider the many thousands of other sites out there that might be aiming at the same market. But rest assured that there are ways and means to this. Ask yourself this, is it better to be on the first page for something that gets searched for 1000 times a month, or would you rather be on the fifth page for something that gets searched for 1,000,000 times a month?
I guess the first thing we need to establish is what exactly SEO is. It is an acronym for Search Engine Optimisation, and is simply the "art" (he says, making himself sound all high faluting) of fine-tuning your website to ensure it places highly in search engines. Do not confuse this with having a lovely shiny website that potential customers fall in love with when they see it. That is all about design and functionality, which we will no doubt discuss at some later stage. SEO is much more to do with clearing the path to your front door.
Go to Google, or Yahoo, or Ask, or any search engine you want, and search for any term. As you no doubt know, what you get back is essentially a list of links. At the top of the page, and down the right hand side are the Pay Per Click (PPC) links which are there because someone has paid for them to be there. You can be there too, and we will be talking about PPC as this site develops. But there is no skill involved in appearing here. Just a deep wallet.
What we are interested in is the organic, or natural listings which make up the main body of the results page. Because Google (figures suggest that it has nearly 2/3 of the search engine market, so we will generally refer to Google throughout this site. Most of the information is relevant for all search engines however) is really rather clever, in ways that you and I will never truly understand, the results are presented in descending order of what Google thinks is relevant, with it's best match obviosuly being first. Google only lists 10 results per page by default, so being anywhere other than the first two or three pages is fairly redundant. Have you ever clicked beyond page three? So why would a potential visitor? SEO is therefore the manipulation of your site to ensure it gets in to that precious Top 20. No mean feat when you consider the many thousands of other sites out there that might be aiming at the same market. But rest assured that there are ways and means to this. Ask yourself this, is it better to be on the first page for something that gets searched for 1000 times a month, or would you rather be on the fifth page for something that gets searched for 1,000,000 times a month?
In : Beginners
Tags: seo ppc google organic natural "search engine optimastion"
