What You Need To Know About SEO, Pt. 1
“SEO” or “Search Engine Optimization” is all the rage in Internet technology circles right now and purveyors of SEO services may be easily mislead, intentionally by unscrupulous vendors or unintentionally by the media and blogs. So in an effort to help individuals and businesses looking for SEO services but wanting to avoid getting ripped off or simply making a mistake, I’m starting a series of posts on the topic aimed at would-be buyers. This will not be a technical series but rather a business one. The questions you can expect this series of articles to answer include:
- What is SEO and why should I care?
- Does SEO really matter?
- What should I expect from SEO?
- How do I know if someone pitching SEO services knows what they are talking about?
- How to find a trustworthy SEO service provider?
- How long does the SEO process take? (hint: this is a trick question)
- What is there to SEO besides SEO? the conversion question…
- and probably a few others I’ll think of along the way…
To get off to a quick start I’ll answer question #1) What is SEO and why should I care? Search Engine Optimization is, by definition, the practice of tweaking or modifying various aspects of your website with the intent of improving your visibility to search engines and your rank or placement on them. In other words, it’s an effort to show up on the first page or two of a Google search, and as high on the page as possible, so that your website will get more traffic. You should care because the search engines are the most prominent way people find the content they are looking for; and, if you are selling a product, promoting your business, or providing content which is paid for by advertising, traffic to your site = business opportunity = revenue. It’s also important from a competitive standpoint because if your competitors are invested in SEO, and you aren’t, whether you have a superior product/service or not, you are diminishing your competitive advantage.
Never in history have the barriers of building a business and selling products and services been so low as they are in the Internet age; and search engines are, at least for now, the gateway to the internet. Not ranking high doesn’t mean your business will fail, and successfully ranking high doesn’t matter if you can’t convert visitors to customers. But ranking well on Google, Yahoo, and MSN will give you a big leg up and and better opportunity to boost your bottom line.
Up next: Does SEO really matter?
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Just found your blog today. Really like it – keep up the good work.Domain info more important than you think
Domain information such as DNS, age of domain and even the expiration date are used to distinguish between illegitimate and legitimate domains.Why are google doing this? Simply to get all the factors they can to get an internal “trust score”.This “trust score” is used to eliminate “doorway” pages and spam in the search result.I’M not saying that it’s working perfectly – but they are doing a pretty good job. -
Good point, although this series is really intended to be a high-level, non-technical discussion. It’s really a fun time to be a part of all of this and figuring it all out. Keep em’ coming
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