Search engine optimization has arisen as a field because most people use search engines and directories to search for information and only a small percentage of pages which meet a set of search criteria will ever be considered by a user.
SEO or search engine marketing originally meant optimization for crawler-based search engines; i.e., making the best or most effective use of them for marketing purposes. Now directories are an important part of the search engine marketing mix and, more recently, paid inclusion services. In many cases, you aren't really "optimizing" for directories except insofar as the SEO techniques influence how sites are listed.
At this point, if you're not familiar with the basics of the search engine optimization process, then you should learn about them and then return because the balance of this page addresses how you should regard SEO as a collection of specialized website marketing techniques which all relate to the searching process.
Understanding and making effective use of SEO requires and understanding of 3 important characteristics:
- SEO is evolving at a rapid and unpredictable direction and pace.
- SEO is dynamic because of the algorithms used and the extent to which factors such as user search behavior, the links other sites create to your pages and your competitors (both product and keyword) interact and affect those algorithms' output; and
- SEO is complex, technically demanding and has a steep learning curve because of intense competition amongst search engines and directories, increased vigilance for spamming, increased quality on other sites (whether competitors or not), innovation in SEO techniques (however short lived) and site content development economics.
It is not enough for your site and its page content to be indexed by search engines and listed in directories. In the case of search engines, research shows clearly (and common sense confirms) that you need to be in the top 10 or so sites listed or a user will be unlikely to find you in the search report generated. Your rank or position in a given engine's search report to a user is based on the ranking algorithms of that site. In the case of the most popular search engine, Google, the page ranking algorithm determines the ranking of your site based largely on your site's relative popularity within the context of your site's keyword content.
All of this means one thing — SEO requires professional expertise. In the early days, web technical proficiency sufficed. Fixed prices for packaged services made some sense especially for smaller sites for whom a website was a project with static pages. Expertise in SEO now includes aspects of information retrieval and extends to all aspects of how people arrive at a page on a site having used some form of search in the process. Now we must include how a user goes from the landing page to other parts of the site.
Moreover, there is always the risk that an SEO technique will be considered search engine spam and penalize you as a result. Spam in this context means "any attempt to artificially influence a search engine's ability to calculate relevancy." See spamdexing. What constitutes "artificially influence" is frequently the subject of fierce debate but the opinions that count are the search engines themselves.
SEO should not be viewed as a project which, once accomplished, need not be revisited. The more appropriate way to look at it is as a program which runs at regular intervals. In addition, within a program, SEO is best approached iteratively; i.e., a series of steps with measurement, analysis and revision on a regular basis. Measurement means analyzing the server logs which record who lands on what page and when. In the result, consider SEO to be an ongoing program of specific steps, decisions and results.
In SEO, we use a variety of terms to describe the ease with which users can find a website using a given keyword, phrase or keyword string. The most popular are the site's ranking or position. The larger context is a site's accessibility and that includes rank or position as well as the ease with which users can find the information they want once they have arrived at a site. In other words, bringing a user to your site through a search is insufficient if, having landed on your page, he or she can't find what they are looking for. In this way, we can distinguish between those techniques which improve a site's rank or position and a smaller group which do so in a more meaningful and useful way. Cloaking and similar techniques increase traffic from search engines but do so by manipulating their pages so that a search engine is fooled into giving a higher ranking than would otherwise be the case.
The key to its being accessible through searching is is the selection and density of keywords. A high ranking of virtually any site may be achieved for a short period of time but longevity is a function of the quality and value of a website's content. SEO can improve a ranking and maintain a high one only if the content's quality and value are substantial.
The bottom line? Everyone searches and you have just as much chance as anyone to achieve a high ranking through SEO and, when all is said and done, SEO is inexpensive for the returns generated.
