What Is Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization becomes second nature to experienced web businesses and developers. But where do the complete novices turn? This website solves that problem.

"What Is Search Engine Optimization? should definitely be the first stop
on your journey into SEO"

Free Search Engine Optimization Guide

Download our FREE Comprehensive 40 Page SEO Guide (pdf).

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What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Search Engine Optimization, is the process of optimizing your website so that it achieves the best possible results in search engines.

Your website's result is referred to as its "ranking". So SEO is a process of improving your website's ranking.

Essentially the basics are simple but like so many things, the deeper you delve the more and more there is to learn.

If you have an SEO business then it would be beneficial for you to appear as the first result on Google for the term "SEO". The reason is clear; the number 1 result receives the most visitors and in turn you get the opportunity to convert that visitor into a customer. So, SEO is directly about improving your position in search engine results, but ultimately it's about increasing your business.

To rank #1 for any given search term is the goal.

What Is Search Engine Optimization?

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Great, so how do I get started?

Well, there are certainly a number of specifics, but first you should get a good understand of what it is that you are trying to achieve.

When creating an online presence you must consider SEO from the start, while you can retrospectively optimize a web presence it is certainly much harder than building it into a website from the outset; in addition while mistakes are correctable it can cost you valuable time and money.

There is only really one hard and fast "rule", it may well seem entirely obvious but it's worth stating:

Your website (or webpage) needs to be highly relevant to your target demographic.

SEO Working for your Business

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The Basics (On Site and Off Site)

In the days before Google because so sophisticated SEO was relatively easy;

Create a webpage with relevant keywords (On Site).
Get other relevant websites to link to you, also using relevant keywords (Off Site).

Essentially these two elements are still what you should always be considering, however how search engines decide what is and what is not relevant has become very complex. For the moment we'll just look at the basics...

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What are relevant keywords?

Relevant keywords are the words that describe your business. In our SEO business example, "SEO" would be considered a relevant keyword. Using the term "SEO" on your website means that a search engine can safely assume that your website is (in someway) relevant to the term "SEO".

Choosing relevant keywords is a basic skill of SEO, and while this may seem obvious it's careful use and consideration can make the difference.

At this point we need to consider the first pitfall; bad, misleading or inappropriate use of keywords can have a negative effect on your SEO. If you overuse keywords or use keywords that are not relevant, search engines may spot this and you could incur a penalty (penalty in this context means a drop in your ranking).

Webpages that use tactics like this are described as being "Spammy", in the same way that an unwanted email is called Spam, a website may also be considered "Spam". In exactly the same way that you don't want Spam in your email inbox, search engines don't want spam websites in their search results. So use variations, don't just repeat the same terms.

Search engines use groups of related keywords to determine relevance, not individual keywords.

Good: Using relevant keywords
Bad: Overuse or spamming of keywords.

Google have a very useful keyword tool that you can use to find relevant keywords, to use that tool click here.

Relevant keywords are key

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How good are search engines at determining relevance?

The simple answer to this is very good. The truth is that a well designed website will automatically use many relevant keywords. This website, for example, is full of relevant keywords, because by default it needs to use them so that it can convey the ideas and information to serve it's stated purpose.

So really what you need to do is consider your subject and write about it clearly and concisely.

Don't assume anything, state all your premises, address the user with clear intent. If you want to address a specific subject, demographic or region state that clearly; for example, if I wanted to specifically address wedding websites I should state clearly, boldly and without ambiguity: "SEO For Wedding Websites". Making a specific webpage about that subset of my subject and/or audience may well be useful if it contains enough specific information.

Good: Clear, relevant focused and concise text.
Bad: Non-relevant, overly long or sidetracked text.

Working Towards Optimal Search Results

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Technical Relevance: Title and Meta Tag Descriptions

There area couple of things from a technical perspective that can help a search engine determine your relevance, those things are your page title and meta description.

The page title is a specific page element that places a title at the top of your page. If you look at the top of your browser now you will see the title of this page which is "What Is Search Engine Optimization? SEO for beginners". (Whoever created your webpage for you can set this if you didn't do it yourself).

The title is vitally important in two ways:

When a page from your website appears in search engine results it will be listed by its title. This means that the person doing the search will scan through the results looking at the page titles looking for the most relevant title, the title that looks as though it is the most likely to provide them with the information that they are searching for.
In addition the title will provide some strong clues to a search engine as to the keyword relevance of that page.

So, you need to balance two very important roles for your page title. Firstly it must attract the searcher to click on it, and secondly it must inform the search engine of that subject matter of that page.

There are a couple of basic rules here:

Put the user first; make it readable and helpful. Without this it's useless.
Put the search engine second; consider how to use your keywords in the title while also following the first rule above.
Don't use unnecessary words, don't turn it into a description (you'll see why next).
Make sure that every page on your website has it's own unique and highly relevant, readable title.
Don't use terms like "Home", or "Page 1", these are not helpful to either the user or the search engine.
Consider the Google only displays the first 60 characters of your title. Any more will be lost.

In addition each of your pages should have it's own unique Meta Tag Description. Meta Tags are additional elements on a webpage that contain information about that page without beign displayed to the user. (Again whoever created your website can easily set these for you).

Meta Tag Descriptions are often displayed under your page title in search engine results, this means that they provide a prime opportunity for you to expand on your title and focus your relevance.

Some of the rules for page titles also apply to the Meta Descriptions:

Put the user first; make it readable and helpful. Without this it's useless.
Put the search engine second; consider how to use your keywords in the description while also following the first rule above.
Make sure that the description compliments the title, don't just repeat the title.
Make sure that it adds some value, expanding and explaining where necessary.
While space is also limited, don't worry too much about a description running out of space, as a cut off can draw a user into the page.

Meta Tag Descriptions

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On Page SEO Part 1: Layout and Copy

We have discussed on page keyword relevance above, but there are some rules to consider in terms of your copy and layout as well.

Visitors are important and valuable, so it's key that your layout, navigation and on page seo is effective:

Each page needs to closely reflect the page title. If you click on a link from Google that says "SEO for Beginners" then a nice on-page title confirming that you have arrived in the right place will reassure and persuade you to stay.
Repeating the title at the top of the page is a good idea, as it says to the user "This is the page that you're looking for".
Now that we have the user and they are reassured that they are on the correct website we need to provide the information and guide them around the website quickly and easily, while always keeping our sales goal in mind.
Navigation needs to be clear and consistent. Keep the navigation menu in the same place on every page. Make the options clear and choose the most relevant words.
Your copy needs to fulfil both roles of being concise and readable while also contain your keywords to aid relevance.
Remember that repeating the same keywords or phrases will appear "spammy", so keep it natural and use variations on your key terms.
Internal (page to page) links are important because you can help a user move around your site, but they also indicate to the search engines what the relationships are between your pages, so make sure that you link relevant and related pages.

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Links

Other than fulfilling your user's requirement in terms of content, and on page keyword relevance, links are the most important part of SEO.

Links can be divied into two types:

Internal (page to page) links.
External (site to site) links.

These two types of links are entirely analogous to your on site and off site SEO, as you have on site links (links from one of your webpages to another of your webpages) and off site links (links from another website to your website).

We need to take a moment here to explain exactly what links are and how they work.

A link is what you click to move from one webpage to another, every link must contain at least two components:

A URL or web address: This is the destination of the link, this is the webpage that you will be taken to if you click on the link.
Anchor text: The text that you see (and click).

The webpage code (HTML) for a typical link looks something like this: <a href="http://www.google.com">Search Engine</a>.

In this example "http://www.google.com" is the URL and "Search Engine" is the anchor text.

On a web page this would appear like this: Search Engine, quite often the link is underlined and looks like this: Search Engine

Now, the important thing to remember is that the anchor text is passing keyword relevance to the destination URL. Essentially, what the search engines do is note that the anchor text contains the term "Search Engine" and makes the assumption that "Search Engine" is a relevant term for Google.

You can look at it as a "vote" for the term "Search Engine" for Google. So anchor text link links helps with your keyword relevance.

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On Page SEO Part 2: Internal Links

Building on the information in the last section we can see that an internal link structure is important.

Careful consideration of your internal links, can help your user navigate your site and at the same time help you build keyword relevance for your pages.

A menu is generally built using a group of organised links, so think carefully about your menu, and the anchor text that they contain.
Try to match anchor text to the destination page's title to the on-page title and tot he the page copy. Together these techniques can subtly but convincingly build your keyword relevance.
Remember that you never want to appear "spammy", so use subtle variations of your terms, search engines build relevance around groups of related terms not on individual terms themselves.
Link from within your text, if you reference a particular term in a section of text, link it to a relevant page.

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External Links

Okay, so we've come a long way; you essentially have your website, and it has good revelvant copy, all the pages have good relevant titles and descriptions. The internal linking structure is good, usable and relevant.

Now comes the hard part.

While the techniques explained above will enable Google (or any other search engine) to gain a good idea about your website, what it's about and in what section of the market it sits, the search engines still need to determine how good your website is when compared to others that sit in the same section of the market.

How do they do that? Well the answer to that is that primarily that they use external links to your website to rank its popularity.

So, if my SEO website has 10 external links pointing to it that use the anchor text "SEO", and your SEO website has 20 external links pointing to it that use the anchor text "SEO", Google will make the assumption that your website is the "better" one for the term "SEO" and rank your website higher in the results for a search for "SEO".

Simple really! However, as usual the devil is in the detail.

So you need to build links, you need to encourage other website owners to link to your website, and as you may imagine that's not always very easy.

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Link Building

Link building is difficult and generally time consuming; however there tends to be a strong correlation between effort and reward, so the more effort that you put in the better the reward and the higher the return.

It is important to note that in terms of external links, there are links, there are good links and there are great links. Not all links are equal, not by a long way, so being able to evaluate a link in terms of its "worth" is an important skill to acquire. This is often where the experience of a paid SEO consultant comes in very useful (if you can afford it) because while it's a skill that can be learnt, experience is what is really needed.

Telling them apart is initially difficult, but as a general rule of thumb the harder they are to acquire the better.

If you can buy a link for $20 then (while it is of course a link) it certainly isn't that same, as say a large news organisation writing an article about your brilliant new website and linking to you.

Creating demand or interest by being unique, or filling a niche for which there is an untapped demand is your best strategy.

Some people may not put it that bluntly, but essentially this is going to be the strategy that most naturally brings you links.

If you set up a website to sell books, you need to compete with Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc., and you will forever fight a losing battle, if you set up a website to sell speciality books in say Feng Shui, then bloggers, and interested parties may well pick up on that and link to you.

However if you invent a device called say, a "Gglobbazzer" that prevents you from stubbing your toe on your night stand, you're going to find yourself very popular very soon, and certainly at the top of the rankings for "Gglobbazzer" (that is if I hadn't just got there first!)

Assuming however that you're in a non-niche market there are other strategies to try (in no particular order):

Link baiting: Create some unique content, maybe attach a blog to your website and write interesting and thoughtful posts. People will naturally link to your posts.
Buy links: Buying links is not to be used as a primary strategy, but buying relevant links form topical sites can be useful, relatively cheap and easy.
Give something away for free: Other people will be interested in highlighting to their own users that there is something to gain from your website and link to you.
Contact related directories: If for example you're in recruitment then there are plenty of sites that hold lists of recruitment agents, in the name of completeness they'll certainly want to list you.
Run a promotion: In the same vein of giving something away for free, creating some buzz or undercutting a competitor will attract attention and therefore links.
Press Releases: A press release through a well known press agency may will generate some buzz, and therefore links, especially if you combine it with a good promotion.
Write a list: Top 10 lists always attract attention, think of a relevant top 10 to your market and create a webpage or blog post about that, remember to link the relevant keywords into your site.
Write about how topical events reflect on your section of the market: In times of financial difficulty write about the effect on your industry and perhaps use that to promote thing that you are doing to counter the difficulties that benefit your customers.
Social bookmarking: Submit your unique content to Reddit, or Digg or Delicious
Engage in Social Media: Post updates on Facebook and Twitter

Linking structures
Working on your Links

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Reliability

Okay, so we're just about done on the basics. There is more to explore and some greater details if you follow the links in the menu top right, including information about usability, content, links, a section dedicated to Google and a glossary.

However, just one more thing to bear in mind...

Search engines operate by use of a small program called a "spider". Their spiders visit your website every so often to determine what pages you have and what content your website contains, it will follow all your links as well as taking a copy of your website and sending it back to the search engine form which it came. It is this copy that their users search, not your website directly, so this has two important implications:

The Spider must be able to access your website.
All your links must work.

So...:

Make sure that you have reliable web hosting, so that your website is always available.
Check your links regularly. There is a good free automated link checker here: Link Checker, you can also download the link report for free.

Maintaining Reliability

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