Whenever I mention SEO, people always ask, what is SEO? SEO stands for “search engine optimization”. Search engine optimization is the process of optimizing your landing page or website for Google’s search engine. Google search engine uses an algorithm to look for a couple of different things in order to list a website in the results when a person types in a specific set of keywords. Keywords are what internet user’s type in to Google’s search engine when they are looking for a product or service. For example, if a user was looking for the best SEO Company in Phoenix, Arizona, they would type in “best SEO company in phoenix AZ” into the search engine and would be presented with the results that Google feels would satisfy the needs of the searcher. SEO is simply optimizing a business person’s website to be the best possible result for a certain set of keywords.
How do SEO companies find the right keywords for a particular business?
They find the right keywords by using Google’s keyword planner. The keyword planner allows you to type in any set of keywords or phrases and the planner will tell you how many times those keywords or phrases are typed into the search engine every month. You can type in any variation of keywords and the planner will also bring up keywords or phrases that are similar to the one’s you are typing in. This is the best way to find out what kind of lingo users are using when looking for a certain type of product or service.
What does Google’s algorithm look for?
The main things that Google is looking for when ranking your website are titles, keyword density, and back links. The tile of your website needs to have your keywords in them. Let’s say a search engine optimization company wants to rank for the term “Best SEO Company”, the title of the webpage or post that is being optimized should start out with those keywords. Like the example above, “best SEO Company in Phoenix AZ”.
The next step would be implementing those keywords within the content or text of the webpage or post. The keyword density, which means, how many times that keyword is stated within the text, usually needs to be around 2-4 percent in order for Google to see that it is relevant. Don’t add the keywords too few of times or too many because Google will see you as either a spammer or not relevant enough. Back links are simply links from other sites that are related to your business. For example, let’s say we want to make a blog post about SEO because we are trying to build a back link to an SEO website. We would construct a blog post that has the SEO related keywords in it and we would put the link of the website that we are trying to build the back link to within text of that blog post.
Google will then read that blog post and discover that the post you created is related to the website and both of them have similar keywords in them. Now, you can just link from any website, it has to be a high quality site with at least a PR 2 or better and that’s the hardest part. Not every site allows you to build links that point to other sites. Research how to build back links if you want to know more about this topic.
SEO is simply a way of connecting searchers to products or services they are looking for. If you can make your titles, keywords, and back links relevant to a user’s search, you will rank highly in Google’s search engine and people will be able to find you when they are looking for a particular product or service that is related to your business.
