What is SEO? The basics of search engine optimization.

Haven’t heard the term SEO before? Not problem, here is the absolute basic primer to get you up to speed on search engine optimization and more importantly how it affects your website.

SEO, or search engine optimization is designing/tuning and maintenance in making your website easily readable by web search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo.
Many years ago as businesses set up websites to attract potential customers it became apparent that ranking higher in the search engine listings is optimal for getting the most amount of visitors to a website, especially in a competitive field.

Let’s do a quick example. Say you own a dog grooming business. If there are 20 competitors in your market. The goal for the SEO of your website would be to get as high in the search engine listings as possible. When searching most users have a high record of clicking on the results that are delivered to them. If your website is delivered as the very first listing after I do a search, there is a very good chance that it will get clicked on. A %75 effective SEO campaign would put you in the top 5 listings and a %90 effective campaign would put you in the top 2 listings for your desired keywords and market.

Beware of businesses and agencies that guarantee SEO listings as there is no real way to make such guarantees. The search engines themselves have very complex programs and applications to determine search engine listing placement. That is their job to deliver the best and most relevant listing to what people are searching for so you do your website a great service to make it easy for search engines to identify and record the information in your website and that is exactly what SEO is, making your website as accessible as possible for visiting search engines.