The search engine optimization (SEO) process has been around for years, but very few know what it means and what it can do for your business or website.
In basic terms, SEO is the process used to improve – volume and quality – traffic to your website or web page. Search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing send search spiders to pick up keywords and links on web pages, the placement and volume of keywords and links on these pages leads to list and/or page ranking of the site when someone searches terms on a search engine.
For example, if someone typed in “hamburger” in a search bar, depending on the placement, amount, and usage of the word “hamburger” on your site (plus links), it produces your ranking on the search engine results page – meaning which page and in which order.
Optimizing sites for search engines started in the mid-90s, when search engines were starting to catalog the web. In the early years it was a simple process of submitting the URL to the various engines; however, it quickly became important to have a top search engine ranking position, so more individuals could find your site – since individuals usually click on the first or second link listed.
Getting your site highly listed on a search engine involves SEO knowledge and strategy. Learn about SEO and more by taking the Digital Media certificate program at SDSU’s College of Extended Studies. Visit www.neverstoplearning.net/digitalmedia.
Some core and basic truths in your post Heidi, which upto now again would be fine to have your website listed somewhere near the top of the search engines, but search engines are evolving all the time to cope with new technology such as the social media scene. A well optimised website, clean in code with plenty of keywords pertaining to your websites theme and good quality backlinks are just not enough anymore it seems. Popularity can also be a key factor and this can only come about by becoming socially active. As you say, it’s not enough to submit your websites url and wait for the many visitors you had hoped for anymore.
SEO, provides most traffic this time. Specially google. But social media also become important now-a-days, specially facebook and twitter. To compete with facebook, google also revealed their social media google plus. Next few days will be interesting for this industry. Waiting to see that.
Google+ is a bit like Facebook without the privacy:)
You click “+1″ and the information is transmitted not only to your friends, but placed on your public profile. Anyone on the network can see what a person “likes / recommends”.
Yes Google + was definitely made to compete with Facebook, but it will be interesting to see how successful it turns out to be. Right now companies can’t create Google + accounts for their businesses except very few businesses that had permission by Google to create accounts and you will see under their name it will say test account. Google said that there will be an option for business profiles at the beginning of the fourth quarter of the year. Right now some businesses have not been caught by Google for having accounts, but will have their accounts deleted once Google finds them. I think that at the beginning Google + won’t be benefical to businesses although down the road it has the option to be useful to businesses just like Twitter and Facebook are now.
hi, nice blog. very interesting. thank you.
I have heard it that even google plus votes will become a part in seo soon, does any know about it?
Wonderful, thank you very much for this really informative post. Just like your other blog posts, everything is well structured and clear. Thank you again
Since SEO is the new industry nowadays, the services it gives to businesses is unprecedented. The cheaper services and longer product visibility it gives, together with the trust and confidence it builds for the product, this will surely give other competitions a run for their money. That’s why starters and small businesses go for SEO!
SEO has become so complicated and competitive that to expect to rank highly for the keywords you want, you have to be prepared to spend a lot of time building backlinks or hire an SEO consultant.
this is really a very knowledgeable article, i enjoyed reading it, thanx
Running an effective SEO and/or PPC (Pay-per-click) campaign will mean the difference between a business that does “ok” online and a business that does “great!”.
Too many business owners think that people will magically find their website online, especially in towns or cities where they usually have 20+ competitors. Unless you are selling the world’s most unique widget, it’s vitally important that you tell people where to find you. Otherwise it’s like buying a shop in a back alley and having no footfall past the store and no signs to point people to where you are.
Matt
SEO is not really that simple, both offline and online SEO. We normally trial and error, while trying to find the best ways that is most effective in major search engines, like google especially
SEO is always changing. Last year Google made 500 changes to their algorithm. What worked to increase a site’s ranking is different today than even six months ago! I was interested to see that there are now professional certificates for digital and social media.