What You Need To Know About SEO: Basic Facts

by: Vanessa Doctor

Exposure could mean a lot for different firms, organizations or groups seeking a wider venue to make their views heard, accepted, and patronized. The main term used for this web-positioning method is the seo, or the Search Engine Optimization.

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What exactly is Search Engine Optimization?

The Internet age has spawned a phenomenon of new terms, new jobs, and new career paths. The growth of the Worldwide Web is creating a new realm, where new types of internet-savvy folks engage in careers that require the skills of an intrepid explorer, searching for new worlds to discover. Among these new tasks are those that require the faster, more strategic placement or positioning of company adverts, documents, products or issues, in order for these entities to have the most maximum level of exposure in the web.

Exposure could mean a lot for different firms, organizations or groups seeking a wider venue to make their views heard, accepted, and patronized. The main term used for this web-positioning method is the seo, or the Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization is the terminology used to define, or describe the action of gaining a better position within a search engine or internet directory system based upon a selected key word or a group of key words. With well over 4 billion documents already on the internet, the prominent search engines are all flaunting that they can locate most of them and show you a link from within their systems, and each of the search engines or directory providers have different guidelines by which a listing within their system is accomplished.

* Achieving Maximum exposure

As web-updated consumers, we are constantly on the lookout for sites that address our specific interests, goals, or products at a specified time and day. Most of us do not always know the URL (Universal Resource Locator) for all the types of businesses that can fulfill that interest, so we use a search engine or directory service to find them for us.

For example, I plan to go out and take my girlfriend with me to a bar, but I haven’t got an idea of which place to go to that I haven’t already been to yet. The next most probable step for me would be to go to a search engine and type in something like: “bars and restaurants pasadena ca"; I put in the quotation marks to make the search more specific, to get me closer to what I am looking for. The phrase I wrote, "bars and restaurants pasadena ca" will be used represent my main key word phrase.

Once I write those key words, I am, hopefully, going to get back a list of the restaurants within the greater Pasadena area, and I indeed got well over 500 or so choices too. What makes it more helpful is that I could find those assorted choices in the local phonebook listings. However, if I wish to make my list of choices much shorter, I would type in, or enter a new search maybe like: "jazz bar pasadena ca”.

Once the search engine has done its job, then I probably will get a shorter list with these new, more precise characteristics. However, the list created will be made in an order that is determined by the search engine. The first one may or may not be starting with the letter A or a number like the one on the phone directory.

From the bar and restaurant viewpoint, if they could be in the top 10 or 20 and get a lot of “hits” or visits by web users, they will have a chance of being seen by the searcher. This is what Search Engine Optimization is all about: gaining a position as close to #1 as possible and then staying there on top, and to achieve maximum exposure.

* It’s all about location

For those who own businesses, then the primary name of the game is profits. Revenue of course, comes from people who spend their incomes with you. The more people spend their money with you, the richer and more successful you become.

In today’s business environment, it is all about LOCATION, and the next important word that comes is “ADVERTISE”.

The way the worldwide web works is the same as in the world of advertising or the directories: It’s about location in the search engines and directory systems, and advertising. If your listing is something less than the top 100, you stand an excellent chance of never being seen, or viewed. Most people are notoriously impatient, and they do not wish to wade through tons of listings. This simply means that you really need to be near, or on the top of the lists for the key words that you feel your prospective customers are, or will be using to find you.

* How Search Engine Optimizers Do This

Improving your position on the web could be done through a wide variety of methods. An easy way for this is to hire a professional Search Engine Optimization firm that can do the job for you. You could check their fees and price ranges on the web or the phone book. The process is definitely a labor-intensive one, and definitely doesn’t come cheap.

But anyway, you too can do it yourself. All you need to do is to get the rules for listing within each of the engines and directory systems where you wish to be listed, the register with them. If they allow you to point to secondary pages that also discuss specific topics, then be sure to do that by pointing to the pages within your site that cover that topic. You may also need to check on your position every month within each of the engines and directories to see how you are stacking up, and sometimes you may need to modify your site to improve your position, as well as your exposure.