What is SEO?

The internet is a vast, untamed expanse of awesome, and in the 21st century, it is a frontier of sorts – not unlike the wild west. There are, of course, many familiar faces on the Internet: Google, Facebook, Amazon, Yelp, etc. Let’s call these guys the marshals in our dramatic recreation of the Old West.

Just as in the old days, these big guys are the de facto law-makers around these parts and it’s best not to upset them if we want our site to do well.

Enter SEO (Search Engine Optimization), every site’s greatest ally in the virtual world. By effectively wielding SEO, our blogs will earn the respect of the local marshals who will in turn recommend them to any newcomers passing through town; and the more visibility the marshals give us, the better our blogs do.

So, What is SEO?

SEO is the art of improving a website’s visibility on search engines such as Google or Bing. Much like a wild stallion, SEO can be very intimidating to approach and difficult to tame, but once you have that magnificent beast saddled, and as long as you keep it well fed, there will be no stopping you!

The basic concept of SEO is: if you optimize your blog, it will achieve a higher rank on the search engine results page. In other words, when someone searches for anything relevant to your blog, you want it to rank as high as possible on the first page because that is what people will generally click on first.

To get the clearest picture of how a search engine works, consider the most popular one: Google. Google utilizes a complex and ever-changing algorithm (step-by-step calculation procedure) to determine what results appear for any given search that we, the user, ask of it. We’ll be going into more detail on how that algorithm works in a future post, so stay tuned!

A search engine’s sole purpose is to provide the user with the best and most relevant results. Search engines like Google are constantly changing their methods to reflect new information and stay up-to-date with what’s best for the user.

Because of these constant changes there has never been a long-lasting or perfect picture of what is the best result for a user and how to get a site the attention it deserves.

Luckily, there is a whole SEO industry dedicated to figuring it out and sharing this information freely. By being conscious of SEO, we can help the search engine to better understand our site and deliver it to the user where it is needed!

Content

Think of content like the absolute meat of your blog; you sat down to dinner and the appetizer was really good, but let’s be honest – you came for the steak.

Content can be any number of things, and varies from blog to blog, but is essentially anything that you offer to the user which is valuable. These pieces of content can be entertaining, educational, written, visual, audible, artistic, or anything else imaginable which a user might like.

The key thing to remember when considering content and its place on your blog is to ensure it is relevant to both your own blog and your user; and by that I mean a blog about shoes will not benefit from one article about zoning laws in New York City, simply because you discovered it was last month’s hottest topic.

One last thing to keep in mind about content: make it good and keep it coming. Search engines are fickle beasts and unless your blog stays relevant, you won’t be at the top for very long.

Linking

Linking is one site’s recommendation of another by directing the user (and Google or Bing) to move off of the former site and onto the latter.

For example, whenever we read an article from our favorite news site, we always come across that familiar blue text which take us to another page. We refer to that text as a link, and it is generally included because the author feels that the content on that second page is relevant to the user based on their interest in the author’s article.

Search engines interpret all of the links leading to a given site, as positive “votes” for being relevant to the user. Ideally, we would want as many of these “votes” as possible, but as far as the marshals are concerned, not all links are created equal.

What’s more important than the number of links, is who is doing the linking. In other words, a “vote” from a well respected site like The Huffington Post will be worth much more than 100 “votes” from a site with low quality content that few people ever visit.

If a link from HuffPo is a boon to the health of our site, then we should likewise consider a link from a questionable site the plague. Should our site become sick from too many spammy links, the marshals will be quick to avoid recommending us to potential visitors.

The key to maintaining a healthy linking profile from as many respected sites as possible, and as few spammy ones; is to create the great quality content we saw a few paragraphs up – everybody loves “voting” for that.

Technical

The technical aspects of SEO are often the most daunting for new beginners because it speaks to the heart of how a search engine operates: computer programming. Everything about our computers and the internet ultimately boils down to code, programming, and language; and within our website is a language of codes that search engines require to understand it.

To put it simply, your blog can have the best and only content our potential users would ever need to live a blissful life of fulfilled Internet use, but, if Google and Bing can’t find all of the resources your blog has to offer, and can’t understand a word our blog is telling them, then you won’t be getting any visitors from search.

Design and user experience are also very important aspects of any site, because it makes up what the the user sees and, ultimately, it’s what they have to endure while spending time on a website

Search engines will take note of a user’s interaction with your blog – for example, the longer the user spends time on your blog and the easier it is for them to navigate, the more favorable Google and Bing will view it.

Search engines use links as “votes” for a website. For example, if another blogger likes a post you wrote and links to it from their blog, it means they found your content useful or interesting.The search engines want to provide useful and interesting content, so they’ll count that link as a vote to your blog. But just one link won’t do the trick. You’ll want your blog to have lots and lots of links pointing to it to help increase your rankings.

However, this doesn’t mean you can simply buy spammy links to point to your blog. The search engines are intelligent, you see, and can tell the difference between spammy, low-quality links and relevant, contextual, high-quality ones.

To better understand each of these issues and how best to integrate these strategies into your site, check back with AmpliFound next month for a full series dedicated to SEO advice and resources!