Basics of SEO - Introduction

Some sources estimate the current number of web pages at over 19 billion. To reach the content on these web pages, search engines have been created to “crawl” like a robotic spider throughout the Internet. Their job is to interpret web page content and create an index detailing the information they find.

Imagine the Internet as the world’s largest textbook; now imagine the index at the back of this book. A search engine’s index contains vast lists of websites, along with the words they should be associated with. People visit search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN to locate the information they have obtained from the Internet. To use search engines, users type in terms called keywords and search engines deliver their list of relevant websites - also called search engine result pages (SERPs) - containing those words. Businesses and organizations compete for high listings on search engine result pages because people most often click on the top results.

The creators of search engines (search engine programmers) tell the search engine what to look for in a website and how to rank search results. Websites that have more of what the search engine is looking for get ranked higher than websites that do not. Keywords play an important part in rankings, but they are not the only factor. For example, Google programmers have created a top-secret algorithm (or mathematic formula) to rank websites and include things like number of keywords, website structure, age of website and how many other websites link to them (called link popularity). Website structure refers to the layout of a website, not its design. In fact, search engines don't care about how "pretty" a website is, the design is for attracting and keeping site visitors. A simplified definition of link popularity says that if other web pages link to your web page, your page must be more important than a page that has no sites linking to it.

Website creators try to “crack the code” of search engines by building web pages that search engines will like. The difficulty in this comes in different forms. First, not only do different search engines use different measurements to rank websites, the search engine programmers often change the algorithms to discourage this “cheating”. Secondly, content that is written specifically for a search engine doesn't typically read well to website visitors. So, although pages may be visited, online success is limited because the pages don't attract and keep customers. Enter search engine optimization (SEO).

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the art of speaking to both site visitors and search engines in a way that proves attractive to both. The end result is that web pages appear higher in search engine result pages and the website owners realize long-term, natural success. The total process of SEO involves analyzing a web page's structure to ensure its readability by search engine crawlers; the addition of SEO content that is rich in keywords that will boost rankings and be attractive to site visitors; the modification of links to make them attractive to search engines; the addition of metatags and titles to each web page with information that is relevant to the page's content; and so much more.

Professional SEO services use foresight to project which components of SEO will have longevity and which components are optimization fads. They must not only understand the fundamentals of search engine technology, but they must also balance this knowledge with some understanding of the website audience's wants and needs. They study, they predict and they succeed online for the long term. From a competitive standpoint, professional SEO services level the playing field between Fortune 500 companies and mom-and-pop shops by giving search visitors the results with the most relevance to what they are looking for.