what exactly is search engine optimization?
Im a dummy when it comes to this term. Is it related to Google Adwords where you have to pay for your site to be on high ranking? Or is it some sort of free stuff where you just need to follow to put traffic on your site? Im really confused studying it online.
SEO is one of the most highly ABUSED areas of web page creation. It means basically reviewing a site to optimize the pages for keywords relevant to the page topic.
How it gets abused is people charge ridiculous amounts of money to "optimize" a web page when if you create it right - build the page for your visitors, not for coolness of appearance but containing lots of text relevant to the topic - it will already be "optimized."
"Im really confused studying it online."
This is their intent, to make it larger than life so you have to pay them $5K to "SEO" your site.
Simply put, read this, burn it into your brain, use it as a foundation:
Search engines don't care who you are or what you sell. That's not their job. Their job is to return the most relevant documents to the user based on the keywords they enter. How they do this is based on the TEXT FOUND ON THE ACTUAL WEB PAGES.
First, understand web SITES don't index, web PAGES do.
Next, understand search engines read TEXT. All that hullabaloo about the keyword meta tag? Guess what, search engines largely ignore these because they are over abused. Where search engines get their keywords are the actual text, on the page.
Last, understand that "SEO" is really more of a "content organization" than anything else. Let's say you have a page on Widgets. But on the same page, you talk about shotguns. You've just diluted the SEO of these topics by mixing the two.
Divide this into two pages - a widgets page and a shotguns page - and when someone searches for widgets, the widgets page will rank better and when someone searches for shotgun, the shotguns page will rank better. It's about focusing the content on one topic.
"I want to be #1 on Google" - for what topic? Note I don't say "keyword." When someone searches for a topic, they will be using a variety of keywords and it's impossible to guess them all.
So you start with something, let it run for a while, review your site stats, see what words are working best for you and what ones poorly perform. Then you go back to the page and improve on the keyword usage for that page.
Not spam, by filling it up with fluff keywords. This will get you banned. Publishers who think they are smarter than the guys and gals at Google and Yahoo who try to outsmart them by putting "widget" in white text on a white background will never see page 100 of SERPS (search engine results pages.)
It all gets down to common sense. Write for your users.
"Is it related to Google Adwords where you have to pay for your site to be on high ranking? "
No, but the concept is similar. You optimize web pages to provide "organic" results via keyword searches. So to SEO a given web page,
- Write content
- THEN look at keywords
- perform a search for these keywords. What topics come up? How is your competition doing what they are doing, and can you do it better? (Side note, do not rip content from someone else's pages, this will insure a "duplicate content penalty.")
- revise your page before publishing, write common sense sentences that are actually of value to your users.
Instead of
"Widgety wonderful widgets for your widget pleasure."
something like
"I've been asked to relate what widgets work best. When I compared widget a with widget b, I found that widget a lasted longer under hard use but widget b cost less. So if you use your widgets a lot, you need a widget that will last. Go with Widget a. If don't use widgets often, I'd go with widget b."
Better than SEO for dummies, and free! Intro, part 1 of 20
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