What is Search Engine Optimization?

At first, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website can be difficult to comprehend–it’s kind of complex, but it’s worth the effort of understanding. I’m going to try to break it down for the beginners, like myself.

The best way I can define SEO is “improving your website’s performance on a search engine.” The first step toward understanding SEO is to understand a search engine and the anatomy of a search. There are “organic results”  and “paid search adwords.” 

SEO only affects the organic results of your website (organic results are free and people are more likely to click on them versus Google AdWords).  It’s a great way to be found, to get around using paid advertising, and as an added bonuse it’s a great way to help you put the “best foot” forward for your website.  According to Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide the first steps to acheiving SEO for your website are:

• Create unique, accurate page titles.
• Make use of the “description” meta tag.
• Improve the structures of your URLs.
• Make your site easy to navigate.
• Offer quality content and services.
• Write better anchor text.
• Use heading tags appropriately.
• Optimize your use of images.
• Make effective use of robots.txt.
• Be aware of rel=”no follow” links.
• Promote your website in the right ways.
• Make use of free webmaster tools.
• Take advantage of web analytics services.

These are the basic starting points for SEO. These alone won’t guarentee that coveted first spot on a Google search.  From here, there are many tips and tricks for further SEO. Signing up for sites like Digg and Delicious can give your page more weight and help improve your  Google PageRank . Your Google PageRank  is what moves your site up the Google search ladder.

These links further explain the tips/tricks for using SEO:

• http://www.thedigitalbus.com/seo-guide-basics/
• SEOMoz Free SEO tools
• SEO Basics Knol by Aaron Wall
• Google Webmaster Tools
• For an even better overview of SEO overview read The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott.

For my blog page, I’m experimenting with SEO. I used most of the techniques listed above and I have signed up for Digg and Delicious.  So far I have managed to get my blog on the first page of the Google search.

Now I just have to work on getting myself up the ladder to the first spot.