SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization.
SEO is the practice of optimizing web site content to achieve prominent listings in major search engines. The holy grail of SEO is to get listed on page one in a search engine’s results thereby increasing your web site’s visibility and visitor traffic.1
At a basic level SEO involves adding keywords, phrases and other meta information to web site pages. This information, along with other influencers including content relevancy, freshness and the quantity and calibre of in-bound links is used by search engines to calculate your ranking.
Why use SEO?
SEO remains an effective tool for attracting visitors to your web site. While it lacks the immediacy of paid inclusion schemes such as Google’s Adwords (it can take up to six months to see listing for your site) it is essentially free and provides reasonably permanent listings2. Done correctly it can deliver high-ranking listings in the organic results of Search Engines which are more independent of commercial influences and therefore more trusted by the public.
Notes:
1. There’s traffic and there’s qualified traffic. Increasing web site traffic through SEO is only part of the true metric and ultimate goal of generating leads.
2. Listings created through pay-per-click (PPC) schemes are typically only live while they continue to be funded. Google has been known to drop legitimate listings only for them to re-appear as mysteriously.
Filed under: What is that?
