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When I work with clients or talk about what I do and services we offer through Evolutionary Designs, I often get asked the question “what is SEO?” or “what is search Engine Optimization?” Once I explain, they ask “why would someone want that and pay for that service?” After answering so many times, I came to realize I never really talked about here. We never really go over what is and how it works. Today, I want to talk about the basics of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), the more important terms and subjects related to SEO, and why it is so important.
So What is SEO?
SEO simply means Search Engine Optimization. Search engine optimization is how search engines create list of sites and is shown to a user that search for keywords. Search engines such as, Google, Bing, and Yahoo! create these lists based on relevance of the site and those keywords. The search engines determine the order of the search based on a complicated algorithm and they are constantly changing those rules. In other words, SEO rules from five years ago may not be relevant to today’s rules. Search Engines rules change so much, you have to keep up with SEO news and check on sites such as Google’s Webmaster Blog and Matt Cutts’ Blog daily. SEO companies spend a lot of time and money keeping up date on the latest rules and any hints Google will give them to help give their clients better search results.
Note: The Definition of Search engine optimization (SEO) is improving the visibility of a web site or pages of a site in search engines. SEO uses a natural (organic) process to help create better results.
Search Engine Optimization and Online Marketing Terms:
- SEO – Search Engine Optimization
- SEM – Search Engine Marketing
- SMO – Social Media Optimization
- SMM- Social Media Marketing
- SERP – Search Engine Result Pages
- PPC – Pay Per Click Advertising
What Do I Need to Know About SEO?
Website owners should be aware that SEO is not a one time job, but is an ongoing process that takes time to build a solid SEO Strategy, implement, and maintain your keyword rankings. Most businesses and website owners who market their site through SEO maintain two strategies of SEO work on their sites. Those strategies are On-Page and Off-page SEO.
On-Page SEO
On-Page SEO is writing your content so the search engines can find your web pages, when someone is searching for keywords related to your content. On-page SEO includes;
- Keyword research
- Interlinking of web pages to relevant content from other pages
- outlinking to relevant sources other than the same site. Such as using Wiki Pages to support or define a word the readers may not know.
Off Page SEO
Off Page SEO is a strategy that website owners implement once the site goes live. This strategy is all about linkbuilding by getting others sites to link back to your site. So basically, off page SEO is all about popularity and influence the more influential and popular site is, the higher your sites page rank will be. In order to gain the page rank and popularity, you need to increase the number of websites that links back to you. This is not as easy as it sounds. You can not go out and by link backs or do a “link to me and I’ll link back to your site” link swap. Google hates reciprocal linking, but loves unilateral (one-way text links) links to your website. You can build links by;
- Link exchanges – Free blog role links. Paid link exchanges are frowned on by Google and other search engines. Do this sparingly
- Article Directories – There are thousands of directory services for submitting your articles. Some are high page rank and free. But some of the high page ranks charges for these services.
- Forums – There are online message boards for almost every niche. Spending time building trust and influence on these sites will get people clicking on your website links back to your sites. Make sure to fill out your forum signatures with links back to your site.
- Commenting on niche related sites – Commenting on 20 – 30 niche related sites daily is a great way to build backlinks and build traffic back to your site. NOTE: Look for sites that are DoFollow and CommentLuv Enabled.
- Bookmarking sites – Submit your sites to bookmarking sites, such as Blog Engage, MMO Social Network, DesignGizer, Blogger Den. Everyday, new bookmarking sites are popping up. Choose sites that have higher page ranks and may be a benefit to your site. In order to truly benefit from these sites, you need to spend time and network with other bloggers by commenting on their sites, and voting on their submissions.
- Online communities – Online communities such as BloggerLuv is a great way to network. This site is a DoFollow site that allows you to submit your blogs, websites and articles. BloggerLuv is also a great place to hang out and make friends and get help with issues on your sites and help you build a better blog.
Final Thoughts
When I am working with a client either doing the SEO process or just consulting, in most cases, I generally recommend a mixture of on and off page SEO. For the sites I maintain or own, I concentrate mostly on-page SEO and work on off-page by commenting daily on niche related sites and using social bookmarking sites for off page SEO.
Image Credit: sachyn
About James
Is that a proven fact that outlinking to relevant sources works? Many people dispute that.
Dennis, everything I have read, and most SEO training courses reinforce this method. I believe Google mentioned that linking to authority sites helps.
If it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t hurt linking certain important words your readers may not know. It can be helpful. I would rather click a link on a site that links to what that word or subject means than opening a search window and doing a search.
Added my voice to the chorus of stumblers; will add this to delicious. The tips are great, the glossary of abbreviations is very, very useful. Most of those abbreviations fly over my head, and I’ve been doing this a while.
Thanks Ashok! If you have any questions, do hesitate to ask me…
SEO is such an important factor when it comes to blogging. Yet so many people ignore it. Every week I get contacted by search engine agencies saying they can increase my google rank etc… bla bla but why pay someone when you can do it yourself? It’s just a matter of spending a bit of time on it every day
Yeah on-page SEO is easy. But most of my clients, do not know what SEO is but they know enough that they need it in order to get customers to their sites.
We have several clients that we run on-page SEO and we also train our clients to do it themselves if they prefer to do it themselves.
I heard that article submissions to other sites is bad for SEO if you retype them word for word, and it results in duplicate content. Submitting links to your articles seem safer.
I hear the same thing as well. Then there sites with High PR and are nothing but have duplicate content. But submitting your articles to bookmarking sites, such as BlogEngage and other sites are good. Just give the article a different tittle and re due the description.
Hi James,
Great post as usual. Though I knew some basics of SEO, I didn’t knew there exist two types – onpage & offpage.. Thanks for introducing it
Jakes, yeah when I first started SEO I was only trained on-page, then after research SEO I found the Off-page stuff was part of SEO.
Sweet introduction on what is SEO. I think that anyone that is doing business or monetizing a site should never neglect SEO. It is free advertising and if done properly could drive massive traffic. All this for free 🙂 Now obviously, it is not easy and one should deploy all the tips you provide here and balance it neweeh both on-page (easier to control) and off-page.
DiTesco, I totally agree, I get about 85% from the search engines and its free! Once you get use to doing the SEO work on your site, it doesn’t take much time and it can be streamlined to help speed the process up.
Thanks for the gentle reminder of what SEO is. I too have to explain this to my website clients so now I will just point them here.
Thanks, I will be sending my clients that do not want SEO services here as well, so they will understand why SEO is important.
Wow James you threw it down nice one 🙂
This post shows how we can miss something and not realize people are showing the LUV 🙂
Thanks
came from the new spot so we can see it works and will work better 🙂
Good to see some members on here commenting
Awesome 🙂
Thanks for everything James I may not say if often enough but I try my best to see what everyone is doing and wanted to say Thanks
Thanks buddy…BloggerLuv is looking good and traffic is building nicely there…
One of my favourite off-site SEO techniques is Universal Search Optimisation… getting people listed in Google Maps for example is a great way to jump to the top on location based searches
“Commenting on 20 – 30 niche related sites daily is a great way to build backlinks and build traffic back to your site.”
You need to specify leaving USEFUL comments. Sorry to be a party-pooper, but if you look at a majority of the comments on this article, they’re mostly bombastic bullshit which in no way begin to resemble a note-worthy thought. They’d be tossed in my spam queue in a second. It’s this kind of practice that is making the web a worse place.
“I already understand the basics of SEO but it looks like you have gone into detail and this post will defiantly help more people understand what search engine optimisation is and how to apply it to their own site.”
Says nothing useful.
Leaving 20-30 USEFUL comments a day takes quite a bit of time, which not everyone has.
True link building takes thought and creativity.
I agree, true linking does take time. I should have mentioned USEFUL comments. Like your comment.
As for the comment you mentioned, that one should have been caught by the spam filter, Not sure why it got through. But its gone now.
20 – 30 useful comments is a lot of work. I did it for a few months and it works great if you have the time and you do it right. Between work, school, other projects, and working on my custom theme (still offline), there really isn’t enough working hours in the day for to me comment like that.
Now I use other methods to build links.
Also, I really do not see a real problem with people leaving comments that are thanking the author (needs to be more than thanks man! or thanks for the great read), if its commenter that leaves good useful comments on other posts, friends, and writers I know. However, I do not consider these useful backlinks. These types of comments get approved. They get trashed, if its a spammer or someone that is only looking for a backlink.