SEO stands for "Search Engine Optimization", and if part of your web strategy is in customer acquisition you may want to learn about it if you don't already know. It is the process of improving your website's chances of being ranked highly by Internet search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing. Most search engines try to list first the web pages they feel will best meet your needs, with additional pages ranked in order of relevancy.
SEO helps make sure your web pages are ranked as highly as they can be. While sometimes sites deserve a low ranking in a particular search, far too often a low ranking is because the search engine is unable to notice how relevant the information on your site may be. Your information may be exactly what the searcher is looking for, but if the search engine does not recognize it, your site may be ranked so far down the listing that the searcher will lose interest before they get to it.
George Seybold, president of Seybold Scientific, a SEO and Online Marketing company in Boise, Idaho, explains that the process of tuning your website for good search engine response is not as mysterious as people might think. "Google does publish…on their blog how webmasters need to think about search engine optimization, what are the fundamentals they need to do. There’s no guessing on this matter. It’s not some fuzzy thing. It’s just a process. And that’s the way we think about it."
He spells out four key elements that determine a web page's position on search engines:
- Content: "Your content should be singularly focused so that the Google bot, which is just a dumb little piece of code, can understand what the page is about topically," Seybold explains. "It’s just trying to place it in the right spot."
- Framework: The structuring of your web page can help search engines determine what a page is about and what is the most important information on that page. This structure is often communicated through tags in the web code for that page. Seybold said that while Google no longer considers some tags, such as <META> (a tag to highlight summary information about that page), other search engines do. Also, information in page and section headers usually is given greater weight by search engines.
- Links: Having links from other websites to your website can help boost your ranking. However, Seybold explains that the reputation of the source matters. Links from poor-quality or unrelated sites can be considered as coming from "bad neighborhoods", and are given less importance. For example a link to a website about business law from Harvard Law School would likely carry more weight than a link from John Doe's weblog about bad movies he's seen.
- Traffic: The number of visitors a sight gets matters. Good, relevant content attracts visitors, even if it can be hard to find at first. Search engines may also pay attention to where those visitors come from, how long they stay, and what they do while they are on your site.
Does everyone with a website need to worry about SEO? According to Seybold, the answer is no. If a website is to support your existing customers and they already know how to find it there would be little need to help others find it more easily. Large companies like Wal-Mart are already so well known that people will be able to find them online without any difficulty. But for companies trying to become known in their market space, good SEO can make a difference.
This article is part of a series based on an inteview with George Seybold of Seybold Scientific. Click below for additional articles in the series:
- Search engine optimization and gaming the system
- Selecting a good SEO provider
- Full transcript of my interview with George Seybold
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- Online advertising : friend or foe?
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- Measuring your marketing
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