subject: About Search Engine Optimization [print this page] Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for short, can be a little confusing to those who aren't familiar with it. In fact, the term might even be a little scary if you're not internet savvy. There's no need to be scared, SEO's are actually very easy to understand and are useful for you and your website.
What Is Search Engine Optimization?
Search engine optimization is making the most out of the internet by making sure that your webpage or blog comes up early when a subject is searched through Google, Bing, Yahoo or any other search engine. To better explain it is easiest to think of the internet as a giant spider web. Every foundation strand of the web is a webpage and its words and every linking strand is a link to a website from one page to another. This spider web is home to billions of tiny little spiders and whenever someone types in a search word the spiders get to work.
Suppose you have a website for horse training. Now, let's say someone has a need for a horse trainer and they go to Google or Yahoo and type "horse trainer" in the search results. Those tiny little spiders are going to walk along all of those strands and links of the web, pull out everything that has they see which has the words "horse trainer" and then put them as your results. This happens in a nanosecond. They're crafty little spiders.
Now, once they have gathered all of that information, they're going to display it in order of relevance. This is where SEO comes in. The search engine will display the importance of a website based on the number of hits it receives, the amount of links it has, and the keywords it uses.
How to Make the Most out of SEO's
With any search engine you want to be up in the ranks. The term "horse trainer" can show millions of search results on a search engine and very few people will take the time to search more than a hundred results. In fact, one hundred is a lot for most people. If you rank number three thousand and fifty four, you're probably not going to be seen very often.
There are ways that trained professionals use a series of mathematical algorithms to implant the perfect words and links onto your webpage to make your website higher ranking in the search results. You can spend a costly amount of money on web consultants for this service, however, there are a couple of simple things you can do on your own to better increase your drive.
For one, make sure to make the most out of your URL. The URL should contain keywords to help bring attention to your page. If your horse training page has a URL with the words stallion or Mare, then it's possible the traffic might be redirected because of some keyword confusion. Make sure the keywords are clear in the URL.
Also, Use plenty of links. Links for other pages similar to your own and links for your own page on popular websites of the same subject will really increase the amount of hits on your webpage. That, in turn, will increase your ranking in the world of SEO's.
