If you are contemplating on building your own website or revamping an existing one, then this is a good time to understand SEO.
Every day, thousands of new websites are spawned into the worldwide web. For search engines like Google, this can mean welcoming a new participant to SEO.
What is SEO? Does Google like it? What can it do for your business?
Defining SEO From The Definitive Source: Google Webmaster
We
bsites that talk about SEO go by the thousands. Which of these sites correctly answer the question “what is SEO?”
Perhaps there cannot be a better and more perfect source than Google Webmaster itself.
According to Google Webmaster, SEO is search engine optimization (referring to the process) and search engine optimizer (referring to the process holder or the person who runs the process).
SEO involves several steps that will prepare your site so that it will be easier for Google to find, index, and rank it.
That said, understanding SEO goes hand in hand with understanding what Google is and how it works.
It is therefore inevitable to ask: What is Google?
In a nutshell, Google is a search engine. As such, if it doesn’t serve to give its users relevant, authoritative, factual, and quality content about any topic, then it has no reason to exist.
Users can find two kinds of information from Google: Ads or Sponsoreds, or those websites which, after abiding by Google’s advertising guidelines and paying the corresponding advertising fees, Google will prominently place on search results (highlighted at the top of the page and as links on the right hand side). The result? Users easily find these sites and go to them to make an enquiry or a purchase.
Google also returns organic search results, or those websites which come up on top of Google because of SEO.
(In hindsight: Not too long ago, organic search results were described as those websites that “naturally” rise to the top of Google. But making that statement poses a striking contradiction to SEO because SEO entails deliberately tweaking your website and its content to be able to make Google take notice of you. In context, the term “organic” is used as opposed to “paid.”)
How is SEO done?
Essentially, doing SEO:
- Preparing your website according to Google Webmaster’s Design and Content guidelines prescribed by Google Webmaster
- Tweaking your website so that it abides by Google Webmaster’s Technical guidelines
- Making sure you consistently follow Google Webmaster’s Quality Guidelines
These three major steps have many more baby steps underneath. That’s how an experienced Google-aligned search engine optimizer can help.
When you have done the necessary steps to optimize your website, you should now start sending signals to Google that your website exists. To do this you should:
- Submit your site to Google http://www.google.com/submityourcontent/.
- Submit a Sitemap using Google Webmaster Tools to help Google see the structure of your website and increase its crawl of your webpages.
- Send signals to other websites that your site exists – and that it is truly awesome!
- Send signals to as many people you know that your truly awesome site exists.
- Repeat steps 3 and 4 regularly.
What Is SEO from the Perspective Of An Online Business?
Certainly if you have a website that clearly features your product and service, offers a facility by which people can make purchase online, and if your website is found on top of millions of other sites, then you have a big opportunity to attract customers—worldwide, 24×7, every waking – and sleeping –moment of your life.
That is the power of SEO.
Now that you know what is SEO, the next thing to do is to contact an expert who can help.
It takes time to do SEO work but it is definitely worth starting early so you can see the returns earlier as well.
Good luck!