The first post in this series served as an introduction to this article series and briefly discussed the importance of having a list of goals for your website. In this article I will explain the term “Search Engine Optimization”.
What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process by which individual pages in a website are modified and updated with carefully researched keywords in order to achieve a higher ranking (listing) on search engines.
Search Engines and the Search Process.
A Search Engine such as Google or Yahoo! is a special website that actively catalogs the web sites and web pages on the internet. The search process starts when a user enters a keyword (search term) into a search engine (SE). The SE then returns a list of web pages that it believes are good matches for the user based upon the keywords that the user entered.
You can think of a search engine as a giant internet “card catalog” like at the library. Accordingly, the search engine searching process is very similar to the method by which you would use the computerized card catalog at the library to look up all of the books the library has on a topic such as the “Revolutionary War”. When you enter this search topic in the card catalog, it will return you a list of all the books the library has about the Revolutionary War.
In the same way that a librarian needs to update the card catalog when a new book about the Revolutionary War is added to the library’s collection so it can be included in the search results, you as a website owner must help the search engines find your website so that your website will show up when people use the internet search engines to find a particular topic.
So one of the main goals of search engine optimization is to find quality keywords (or search terms) to use on your website so that the search engines can add your website to their database of websites in the correct category (e.g. if you use the keyword “Revolutionary War” on your home page, the goal is that when someone does a Google search for “Revolutionary War” that your home page will show up in the top listings. I will discuss what criteria make for a quality keywords and the keyword selection process in a later article.
In the next article I will answer the question, “Why Does my Business Website Need SEO?”
For a free SEO consultation for your website, please visit our parent site, Short Hills Design, at www.shortihllsdesign.com. Short Hills Design, LLC is a web development and SEO firm with a proven track record of SEO success.