What is SEO?

One of my readers recently asked the very important question,”what is SEO?” Thanks to this reader, those of you who were afraid to ask will get some very valuable information for your online business marketing in this article where I explain what SEO is. The acronym SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.  One of the gurus I learned from told me, “SEO stands for Self Employment Optimization” – and boy is this true for all business owners that do any marketing online!

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Search Engine Optimization is the process by which people get their websites (and/or their client’s websites in my case) to list as high as possible on the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

The whole idea is that the search engine companies make money via advertising.  They will only make money advertising if many millions of people are visiting their site.  People will only continue to use their search engine if it is easy and fast for them to find exactly what they are looking for – whether it is information, products, services, etc…  So, the search engine companies develop and continuously improve their algorithms (fancy word for a calculation that takes into account many variables with various weight) so that we can quickly and easily find what we’re looking for on the world wide web.

See the article – What factors do search engines use to rank websites? To see the exact details of what the search engines are looking for.  Also take a look at Why is Keyword Research the Most Important thing a Business owner Can Do? to get started.

What are the key steps to SEO?

1)      Keyword research – use common sense first – ask 10-20 of your clients what they would type into a search engine and use the most common answers to do your research

2)      Keyword research – use Google’s free keyword tools to see how much traffic there is for keyword phrases, how much competition there is, what keywords your competition is using to optimize their sites and how much people are paying for ads using those keyword phrases.

3)      If you find you’ll be doing keyword research often, I highly recommend buying a software tool such as Market Samurai or Micro Niche Finder.  If you’re going to do it once for a business, Google has all the tools and instructions you need.  The other software tools often pull from Google’s data.

4)      The actual search engine optimization is a complex process of making sure that your domain name, title tag, site description and content all have the keyword phrases you researched and chose in the steps above.

5)      You can also get links to your site from strong ranking pages to help your site have stronger rankings – search engines’ crawlers and the algorithms they use think that your site must be very important and relevant if you have lots of links.

The rest of the details of SEO will have to come in future articles.  There’s too much to explain in one article.  I hope this satisfactorily answered your question – what the heck is SEO? Eager to learn more? Sign up to receive a free gift with my top ten SEO secrets to get you on the first page of Google! 

If you don’t feel like doing all of the technical, heavy lifting by yourself, our team has incredible tools, experience, and knowledge to help improve your website’s SEO. We serve clients all over the world, and of course love serving local businesses in the Sacramento Valley. Call today for a free estimate  (530) 426-8404  or e-mail us at Jim@summitbusinessmarketing.com

Jim Kaspari

Summit Business Marketing

Web Design . SEO . Marketing Consultation . Business Coaching Services

111 Natoma Street, Suite 111 Folsom, California CA 95630

phone (530) 426-8404 | fax (440) 425-6094

Jim@SummitBusinessMarketing.com

We proudly perform effective, professional, old-fashioned SEO in Folsom, Granite Bay, El Dorado Hills, Orangevale, Rancho Cordova, Fair Oaks, Auburn, and Roseville CA California areas.