SEO - A Primer

 SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, a means of increasing the amount of traffic to a web site or a blog by optimizing the material posted on the web site or in an email and RSS feeds. SEO aims at increasing the number of visitors to a web site or blog by improving its rankings in various search engines like Yahoo, Google, Ask Jeeves, Bing, and so forth. SEO also aims at getting the visitor to stay on the web site longer, thereby increasing the chances of sales. SEO is often compared to the process of marketing a product or service. Marketing your business through SEO can be very effective, however, many business owners believe in SEO as a means of promoting their business.

SEO has come to be a popular means of marketing the business as many entrepreneurs now use SEO techniques while marketing their products and services online. SEO is not new to this world and the practice has been there since newspapers started publishing classified ads in the 18th century. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and if done properly and creatively, it can help to improve the volume and quality of traffic visiting a particular web site or a blog. SEO targets free traffic as well as paid traffic and tends to ignore organic traffic. Organic traffic is that which comes to the web site or blog with no third-party assistance and SEO techniques therefore have a lot of potential when it comes to advertising online.

SEO uses different techniques to promote the websites or blogs, these techniques are also used for improving the ranking of the website on the search engines. Search engines like Google rely mainly on the user experience and the content on the website to determine the ranking. SEO incorporates various elements in the website, this includes meta tags, headers, keywords, and alternate image texts. This helps the search engine algorithms to assign a high rank to the website or blog based on the user experience and the content provided. SEO makes use of different methods of creating content such as writing articles, press releases, blog entries and SEO optimized images and so on.

The SEO chapter 2 provides information about keyword research, which is one of the most important SEO tools. Keywords play an important role in the rankings and should be chosen wisely for better visibility. SEO experts use a special kind of software to conduct keyword research which is called a keyword suggestion tool. This tool enables the users to find relevant keywords for their SEO campaigns. Keyword suggestion tools also help in analyzing the competitiveness of a business in terms of the key phrases used for SEO.

The SEO chapter 2 also discusses the various ways of optimizing a website which includes off-page techniques and on-page techniques. This includes adding Meta tags, reciprocal link building, directory submissions, article submission and ALT tags. Off-page SEO involves using SEO friendly coding, use of meta tags, directory listings and ALT tags. On-page SEO improves the ranking of a site by improving the content quality and improving usability of a site.

In the final chapter, SEO provides some guidelines to ensure compliance with the various standards set forth by the SEO community. The main aspects to consider in SEO include creating content, generating link popularity, ensuring keyword density and maintaining site consistency. The search engines keep a close watch on the changes made in SEO and keep updating their algorithms to index new and improved versions of the same keywords. The SEO community has been working towards creating a more search engine friendly environment and to make the results of the search results reflect this.