What is SEO: The Content That Drives Search




When I speak to local business owners and managers about creating relevant content I find many confused faces. When I say SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, I usually hear an uncertain "uh-huh". This is not a bad thing but it is unfortunate that many business owners are oblivious to the most important part of their business and internet searches.

SEO is the arrangement of content whether it be pictures, video, or text that determines the searchability and ultimately the ranking of one's website or specific page on the net. Let's take an example: I'm a health conscious consumer and I want to find or find out about apple cider vinegar. How would I go about finding information on this topic?

Google it, Bing it, Yahoo search it are some places to start and most start at Google. So I go to Google and I search "apple cider vinegar" and I start looking at the results. Almost all people will find their query that answered their question on the first page. This is because Google has refined and will continue to refine their PageRank Algorithm until they reach perfection. The results you see when you search is the result of very knowledgeable content creators and SEO wizards knowing how to create content that people WILL FIND USEFUL! Google ranks the most relevant content at the top of the page for organic search results (organic results is simply the search results that aren't advertisings). The top listed results will have complete and relevant information for the search keywords. Now SEO is a highly involved process that factors everything from meta tags, title tags, inbound links, outbound links, plain english reading patterns, fresh content, updated information and a host of other factors that are far to involved to explain and list here so I will give a simple analogy of what Google and other search engines want from your website.

When you go to a grocery store (website) I would imagine you want fresh food (content) that is easy to find and new products (updated content) that you might be interested in. I would want to walk in and have each aisle clearly marked (site map) and stocked with what I'm looking for (search content). The aisles would be translated to pages on a website. You don't want to walk down aisle that's marked rice and the rice not be there (broken links or links to something completely different as to what you seek). You might stick around this grocery store if you start to find things you might be interested in also (new and updated information, bounce rate, page views). You might not need the aisle marquee to say "Rice on this aisle". "Rice" would be sufficient to identify what is on this aisle (links do not need to say "click here", simply hypertext the word or phrase that leads to the relevant landing page.

I can go on however this entry was intended to give you readers a better understanding of what SEO is. SEO is the practice of creating relevant content that will in turn optimize your search engine ranking.

If you have any questions feel free to email me at david@davidazua.com David Azua : www.davidazua.com

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