What Is SEO: Introduction To Search Engine Optimization
New to Search engine optimization? Don’t worry, we ‘ve got you covered.
Imagine you just obtained a sum of money and you decided to use the money to pimp up your new apartment.
You want the best, so you decide to hire an interior designer/ decorator to help fulfil your burning desire.
Then you pick up your smartphone or laptop, open up your favourite web browser, and type in your search term, which is interior designers or interior decorators. You press the search button.
Something like this pops up with about 89,800,000 results.
But you stay in Nigeria, Lagos to be specific. So, you localize your search to “interior decorators in Lagos Nigeria”and you are presented with another 100000 interior designers in Lagos.
Much better. But you can’t possibly run through the 489,000 options. What do you then do? Settle for the first 10 results or 20 if you are the patient kind.
You proceed to visit the sites of these interior decorators so as to learn more about their abilities, previous works, credibility, etc. and you finally settle for nos. 1, nos. 5 or anyone of them. Good enough, right?
Unknown to you, the best interior decorator in Lagos is listed on “page 4” of the Google search result. But who has the time to check out page 4?
And why on earth is the best not listed on the first page?
The answer lies in what is known as PageRank and the way to achieve good PageRank is referred to as SEO meaning Search Engine Optimization.
What is SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION?
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the name given to any activity that attempts to improve search engine rankings for blogs and businesses alike.
It is the simple activity of ensuring that your website can be found in search engines for words and phrases relevant to what your business is offering as represented or communicated by your website.
Think of SEO as the process of improving and presenting your website in a way that will attract more visitors from search engine results.
The position of your website in google search results is what is referred to as PAGERANK or SEARCH ENGINE RANKING.
When you optimize your website(SEO), it has a greater chance of appearing in the search engine top results (especially the first page), which subsequently increases the traffic to your website.
The optimization process includes many techniques and methods that we will be visiting in this course.
How Does Google Rank Websites In Search Results?
Firstly, Google is not the only available search engine. It is, however, the most widely used search engine to the extent that the word search as now been replaced with “Google”. Eg, have you “Googled” it.
There are over 100 search engines in the world including these few:
- Bing
- Yahoo Search
- Ask
- AOL Search
- Wow
- Web Crawler
- MyWeb Search
- Info Space
- Info
- DuckDuckGo
- Contenko
- Dogpile
- Alhea
- ixQuick
And lots more.
The websites that Google rank on the 1st page of its search results for any given search term are the ones that they consider to be the most relevant and useful.
They determine which websites are the most useful and relevant by using a complex algorithm (mathematical process), which takes into account over 200 different ranking factors.
First, Google uses special programs called spiders to retrieve data from various websites (a process called crawling).
Then, the information is digested and stored for quick and accurate retrieval.
After crawling and indexing, a search engine will make use of the algorithm to determine a site’s initial ranking in search results.
The website ranked in 1st place is the website that the algorithm has given the best score to when taking into account the 200+ factors.
So, for example, if a website that is ranked on the 4th page for a particular keyword phrase decides to improve its site structure, add new content and seek out new high quality backlinks, among other things whilst the websites on the 1st – 3rd pages of the search results don’t also make improvements, then the website on the 4th page will rise in the rankings.
Fun right?
It is important to point out that Google is constantly reviewing, adjusting and updating its algorithm, so a website that is ranked 1st today could potentially not even be on the 1st page next week.
Scary! But it isn’t as bad as it sounds.
You might want to check out some important changes to Google algorithm in the past as we prepare for the next lesson (200+ Google Ranking Factors).
For a complete guide to SEO, click here to take our SEO Training For Beginners: How To Get 1,000 Daily Visitors.
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