SEO for Newbies: intro

So what is SEO anyway?
SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization and it consists in tailoring your site’s content, architecture, meta data and code so that it can easily be found and indexed by search engine crawlers such as Googlebot. It is done on the basis of carefully selected keywords and keyword phrases that are appropriate for the site’s content. If it is done well and without resorting to spam, SEO should result in high rankings in the organic results of various search engines (the big 5 being Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, AOL and Ask) for the relevant keywords i.e. queries that users search for.

In today’s world, it has become increasingly important to have top rankings. A recent searchers bahavior study conduted by Jupiter Research and sponsored by iProspect shows that 62% of searchers click on a search result on the first page of results and 90% in the first 3 pages of results. This means that if your site is not listed withing the first 3 SERPs in that engine for that keyword phrase, your site is very unlikely to be found.

There are about a hundred on-page and off-page factors that determine the site’s ranking in a search engine, some of these factors are known, others remain somewhat mysterious and are the subject of vivid speculation and / or experimenting by SEOs and webmasters. This “secret sauce” of factors is called an algorithm.
SEO really is a combination of technique, marketing, creativity and - to some extend - luck. And it’s fun!

For a detailed explanation of SEO terms and search engine terms in general, visit my SEO Glossary

technorati tags: seo - google