SEO (Search Engine Optimization)The Basics

Intro – A simple explanation

What is it? In a nutshell it means getting your website showing on the first pages of search results (and ideally number one!). Forget about being at the top of page two or page three. Page one is where you need to be to placed to really be beneficial. Most sites are found by people using search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing etc. and type in some words. Let’s say they are looking for daily deals to buy online. You might type in the search box: 4 door car

These words are called keyword phrases. They play a very important role in SEO. We’ll take a look at that in more depth soon.

Once you’ve typed in your search (keyword phrase) and hit search, your familiar search results page will show. You’ll have a look, and probably like most people, click on several links on the first page. You can see the importance of being on page one as very few people click to the second page. Sometimes you’ll see a few search results right up the top that look slightly different – these are search results that people pay to display – there is normally no more than 2 or 3 of these and sometimes none.

So what what determines what’s shown on the first page or search results? Search engines all have their own ranking algorithms that are secret and not known publicly. However there are some techniques we can employ using those keyword phrases to optimise your website (or a particular page) to help that you show on the first page of search results.

PAGE RANKING Larry Page and Sergey Brin, invented PageRank and it forms the basis for how Google works. Google didn’t become the best search engine in the world by chance, it became the best search engine because it provided the best results. PageRank is in fact the technology that gave Google its competitor-killing edge, a way to greatly improve the accuracy and validity of a search response to a user query.

In short PageRank is a “vote”, by all the other pages on the Web, about how important a page is. A link to a page counts as a vote of support. If there’s no link there’s no support (but it’s an abstention from voting rather than a vote against the page).

Example?

Top high street and online fashion/clothing companies are on top.

Due to quality of product and content on their sites. As a result, lots of other websites have linked to them and increased their rank.

Rank: 8.7

Rank: 7.4

Rank: 5.6

Rank: 8.9

Rank: 6.9

Rank: 8.3

Interactive task Google a keyword for your business/website:

E.g: For AllAboutCareers our keywords are ‘graduate’

How it works- Basics Search engine optimization. It’s a clunky term for sure. You can’t optimize search engines. In fact, you can’t even learn exactly how they work. These are well-guarded secrets.

What can you do? You can do the right thing to your website’s pages—optimize them—to increase the likelihood Google and the other search engines know where they are and what they contain, so it will present them as a recommended resource when they match a search.

That’s not all you can do. It’s ground zero—what you have to do. And though you need to understand what you’re up against to do it well, this activity, defined as “onsite optimization,” is the easy part.

The other stuff you can do represents the hard, but more meaningful part. This other stuff happens “offsite.” I’m going to explain.

But for now, to answer the question, I’ll say SEO means the things you do onsite and off to help get presented by a search engine and discovered by its users.

Search engines all have their own ranking algorithms that are secret and not known publicly. However there are some techniques we can employ using those keyword phrases to optimise your website (or a particular page) to help that you show on the first page of search results

Dos & Donts/Myths & Facts

Why YOU use it?SEO is an abbreviation of Search Engine Optimization. This is the process of structuring a web page so that it is found, read, and indexed by search engines in the most effective manner possible.This makes your web site and its content attractive, relevant and visible to search engines and web searchers.Why is this important? Consider what it would be like if no one could easily find your place of business, or even your telephone number. Most businesses could not continue for long in such a situation.The same thing can happen with your web site if people cannot easily locate it. Traffic volume, if it existed at all, slows to a crawl. Potentially valuable customers never even know you are there."Wait!" you say. "I had a web site created, and the address is included in all of our advertising. Why wouldn't people be able to find it?"Certainly, existing customers or those who are already familiar with your company should be able to find your site without any great difficulty, but this may not be the case.Can you be sure that every potential customer has been reached by your advertising? What about the people who don't read the magazines or newspapers where you chose to place advertisements?Did they hear the right radio station? Did they watch the right television show? Did they get one of the thousands of brochures you mailed?So, what about the search engines? Those people could just enter a few words into a text box, click a button, and voila! There is a link to your web site. Aren't search engines wonderful?Yes, search engines can be wonderful, and the scenario above can happen, but not without some work. This is where SEO comes in.

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