What is seo?

Search engine optimization is the process of using different techniques and methods to try and increase traffic from search engines like Google.

The closer to the beginning or top of the search results your web pages appear, the better chance you have of receiving more visitors to your website.

Seo involves researching keywords used in the search query by someone searching for particular information. The words searchers type into the search box are called keywords or key phrases.

Performing seo on a website or page can be completed during the writing of the original content or after the webpage has been published to the live website and the internet. Seo involves both on page and off page techniques & methods.

Seo also refers to industry experienced specialists who offer services for a living also known as seo experts.

On Page

This involves optimizing all the important on page elements and keyword positions which are included in the content of your website pages and blog posts. On page SEO also includes internal linking, keyword research and a list of other important on page factors.

Off Page – Links

Off page Seo focuses mainly on building external incoming links to your site in order to increase the importance of your content from other websites. Fine tuning link building involves using the correct anchor text (linked keyword).

The keywords and key phrases which are linked from an external source to a page on your website should describe what the content on that page contains.

Building links from sites which have a page rank (PR) higher than yours is seen by the search engines as a vote of confidence in your websites content.

Indexing

Google, Yahoo and Bing are the 3 largest search engines which most webmasters and blog owners like their sites to be indexed with.

You can submit your website/ blog or new posts/pages to the search engines for inclusion in the search results (index) or you can wait for the search engines robots (bots) to find your new content.

Search engines can’t read websites like humans can so they prefer to read a sitemap. Sitemaps can be installed on your website to include your text content, images, videos and mobile.

The search engines love sitemaps which can also be submitted directly for inclusion via webmaster tools offered by all three engines.

Best Practices

Increasing targeted traffic from the search engines to your webpages involves different methods and techniques where best practice is called white hat Seo.

Black hat Seo involves using tricks and other methods to try and achieve better rankings unfairly.

The most common white hat methods used to improve the optimization of your website is to include internal links with anchor text, correct use of keywords relevant to your content, unique, descriptive titles and a high degree of relevancy to the search query.

Unique, quality content which is useful and creates a great user experience should also solve the problem and provide the best solution or list of solutions for your site visitors.

Guides

Several of the best Seo Companies produce a beginners guide to Seo and Google also produce a free Seo starter guide which is highly recommended reading.

Seo Companies

The best Seo companies offer a fantastic free resource of tips and tools which you can access and use and build knowledge.

Some of the best resources & tools come from:

1. SEOMoz – World’s Best Seo Software
2. SEOBook
3. Google Webmaster Tools
4. Google Adwords Keyword Tool

Experts

The most famous seo experts who are well known in the industry are:

1. Aaron Wall – SEOBook
2. Matt Cutts – Head of Google Webspam
3. Danny Sullivan – Search Engine Land

Rankings

Most search marketers focus far to heavily on link building and therefore receive most of their traffic from links rather than from search results.

Increasing links and page rank don’t increase the quality of your content nor do they create a better experience for the searcher.

Some of the best examples especially in respect of on page seo and internal linking come from non profit sites like Wikipedia.

Social Media

The more popular your content, the more signals the search engines will receive that your content is useful.

This is the reason social media is now playing a major role in how high your content is indexed.

Unpopular content that doesn’t produce sharing from your readers to their network results in poorer rankings in the search results pages.

Search Engine Results Errors

Some of the big search engines like Google do make mistakes when indexing web pages.

Even though Google has stated they don’t want the same domains url’s indexed more than 3 times on one page, they continue to produce these errors.

Google continues to index forum questions without answers and blank pages in their results because of the strength of the domains authority and high page rank.

What has been your experience optimizing your blogs content for the search engines?

Any tips & resources you’ve found useful?