If you’ve heard the terms SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing) before, you’ve probably spent a fair amount of time on the internet. Even if you have heard or read these words, you may not understand their importance in the world of online marketing. The purpose of search engine optimization is to achieve the best possible ranking for a website in search engines (such as Google, Yahoo!, Bing and others), for maximum visibility. The “best possible ranking” would be at the top of the page, or the highest result, because those results are the ones that have the most visibility and are therefore clicked on most often.
If you are reading these words, you are undoubtedly an Internet user. As an Internet user, you are most likely familiar with using search engines to find information on topics that interest you or want more information about. When you do a search for replacement windows, for example, you’ll probably type in those words, “replacement windows.” The results page will load with millions of thousands (or millions) of articles and websites that contain the words you were looking for.
Obviously, you’re not going to read much past the first page or two of the results, that’s too slow and a bit ridiculous. However, it will check the results that loaded on the first page, starting from top to bottom. This is how our natural reading technique works: top to bottom, left to right. So how does Google, Yahoo, or Bing know what results to show on those top few links?
Retailers that sell replacement windows (or whatever you’re looking for) want to appear at the top of these results pages so you have a chance to browse their business page and become a customer. It doesn’t do any good for a business to get buried on page 149 of the search results, because no potential customer will find it there. Search engine users feel the same way. If you were looking for information on a specific product, the first results you want to see should be relevant, informative, and useful, not an obscure article that barely mentions the words you entered into the search box.
Simply put, that’s what SEO does. Structure a website so that it can get the most attention from a search engine. The way this is done is by embedding words and phrases that are meaningful to the search engine and the person doing the search, called keywords, in the body of the text or in the titles. The use of these keywords – frequency, positioning, etc. – is important and can make a difference in search engine rankings.
Determining keywords can be difficult. It’s about knowing what Internet searchers are going to type in the search box. Some might type “replacement windows,” while others might search for “new windows” or “energy-efficient glass.” Using all of these keywords and phrases on a website can drive you to the top of the results page, drive traffic, and produce more customers, and that’s the true measure of SEO value.