SEO: What does that mean?

The letters SEO stand for search engine optimization. If this is a new phrase for you, don’t feel bad, you are not alone. Most people stare when the phrase is mentioned. Some call it art. Others call it a necessity. Everyone agrees that there is much to learn. What you will learn here are the basics.

It seems that everyone has a website. There are no truly “unique” businesses anymore. Everyone has competitors. All of those competitors have websites. The goal of SEO is to get ahead of the competition. That is, you want your business to rank higher than the competition when someone types something into a search box.

Let’s say you sell Avon. If you type Avon into Google, you will get 39,100,000 results, but the first page will only contain 10. The end goal is to be one of the ten websites on that first page. There are a couple of ways to do it.

Today, Google, Yahoo, and most other search engines sell space. At the top of the Avon results, you will see “sponsored links.” Those are companies that paid a fee to be on that first page. If you go to the second page, you will see that there are more sponsored links. The cost of advertising your business with these engines is determined by the page and the position in which you would like your website to be.

It is similar to the way newspapers sell advertising. Ads in the top half of the page cost more than ads in the bottom half of the page. Ads on the first page cost much more than ads on the last. When people search for something online, they often click on the first thing they see. That would be the first page that appears.

Organic search engine optimization costs nothing. It’s the idea of ​​getting the most out of your keywords; things people might be looking for when searching for your business. Going back to the Avon example, they may be looking for cosmetics, jewelry, cologne, bug spray, gifts, or anything Avon sells. If you sold Avon, your SEO goal would be to have a page somewhere on your site with those strategically placed keywords.

Now, you can’t repeat the words many times, because web crawlers would consider it spam. There are several software packages that help individuals and businesses get the most out of search engine optimization. If you’re just starting out, some software can be a good investment. Go to Google and do a search on different SEO software packages.

In addition to proper keyword placement, SEO involves getting quality inbound links to your site, appearing in major directories, and providing quality, targeted content, among other things.

You must remember that search engine optimization is not an exact science. We can only try to optimize, but any effort is better than none.