SEO – Search Engine Optimization
SEO is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic from the “organic”, “free”, “editorial” or “natural” search results on various search engines. SEO is the simple activity of ensuring a website can be found in search engines for words and phrases relevant to what the site is offering. In many respects it's simply quality control for websites. A successful search engine optimization campaign will have, as part of the improvements, carefully select, relevant, keywords which the on-page optimization will be designed to make prominent for search engine algorithms.
Search engine optimization is broken down into two basic areas: on-page, and off-page optimization. On-page optimization refers to website elements which comprise a web page, such as HTML code, textual content, and images. Off-page optimization refers, predominantly, to backlinks (links pointing to the site which is being optimized, from other relevant websites). There are two major types of search engine optimization, white hat search engine optimization (the best kind), and black hat (the not so good kind). There are of course differing opinions about the nature of each type of SEO. Get the information you need to be able to tell them apart and make an informed decision.
SEORapidly - SEO Services
There are some major search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo which have primary search results, where web pages and other content such as videos or local listings are shown and ranked based on what the search engine considers most relevant to users. There are a number of SEO services which can help contribute to the improvement of the organic search engine rankings of a website. These services include, but are not limited to, on-page (or on-site) optimization, link building, search engine friendly website design and development, and search engine friendly content writing services.
If you are more into the link building side of things (working to improve the rankings on your site by earning links), go straight to the Beginner's Guide to Link Building. Links are important but don't confuse quality with quantity and don't think about links in isolation from your content. It's vital to understand that having great content massively increases your chances of securing natural links from quality relevant pages. These links will help you the most.
Quality of traffic is that you can attract all the visitors in the world, but if they are coming to your site because Google tells them you are a resource for Apple computers when really you are a farmer selling apples, that is not quality traffic. Instead you want to attract visitors who are genuinely interested in products that you offer. Quantity of traffic is that you have the right people clicking through from those search engine results pages (SERPs), more traffic is better.
A site is not really a site until you have content. But SEO for content has enough specific variables that we have given it its own section. Start here if you are curious about keyword research, how to write SEO-friendly copy, and the kind of markup that helps search engines understand just what your content is really about. Great Content encourages people to link to your pages and shows Google™ your pages are interesting and authoritative. This leads to search engine success because Google™ wants to show interesting and authoritative pages in its search results.
Google™ promotes authority pages to the top of its rankings so it's your job to create pages that become authority pages. This involves writing content people find useful because useful content is shared in blogs, twitter feeds etc., and over time Google™ picks up on these authority signals. This virtuous circle creates strong and sustainable Google™ rankings.
On the surface, search engine optimization is a good way of marketing a website; after all, who does not like free traffic. Unfortunately, that kind of approach to SEO is exactly how many individuals and companies invest thousands of dollars into SEO campaigns without useful results. There is a lot of misinformation about what an SEO campaign (company) can accomplish when it comes to organic search engine rankings. Here we try to dispel the myths, and give you realistic expectations of what a search engine campaign can accomplish in the short, mid and long term.
To learn more about search engine optimization and help you get started on optimizing your website, check out our services or feel free to contact us if you want to rank your websites.
