What is SEO?

SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimization and is a broad term used to cover the many strategies associated with performing search engine optimization on-site and off-site for your website.  SEO in general is used to describe the actions taken by a site owner, webmaster, SEO specialist or individual to boost a websites search engine rankings. They do this by using specific SEO techniques, analysis, and strategies to help improve the sites internal structure and external rank.  Proper use of the SEO strategies by professional SEO consultants can help increase the internal web pages natural search result rankings on sites like Google, Yahoo and Bing.  A big part of SEO is implemented by using the correct keywords on site, proper Meta tags, checking ease of navigation, providing quality relevant content and off site building links that reach back to that website.

Search engines use complex algorithms to sort a database of billions of websites into the most relevant to a user based on their search criteria. One of the parts of the search engine’s algorithm is keyword matching.

For example if a user searches for ‘Hawaii beachfront resorts’ the resulting pages that are displayed will be deemed relevant to the phrase ‘Hawaii beachfront resorts’. The search engines like Google do this by showing you in descending order the pages they deem to be the most relevant. To ensure that your website is not filtered out as irrelevant you have to ensure the correct keyword placement is in place on your pages but it also goes much deeper than that in regards to results returned.

One of the first things our SEO specialists check a website for is correct Meta tags, quality relevant content, keyword density, keyword synonyms, photo alt text, and navigation. Relevant quality content using the correct keywords, and now even more important the synonyms for those keywords, no evidence of keyword stuffing, interesting information that a potential client or customer would like to read all play a part in the search engine algorithm and everything needs to be done correctly. This starts with the page title; the title is what is displayed in the browsers top bar and in the tab bar. It can be set by typing in between the tags in the pages html header. The title is the first element of the website home page or inner web page that a search engine analyzes. The title not only needs to be relevant to the keyword it targets but the page content also. If the title and content do not match appropriately, the search engines will disregard your page from their results. Knowing how to put this in place, having enough content on each page, using the correct keywords is part of the SEO on site strategy that an SEO specialist will insist be done for best search results.

Off-site SEO strategy involves creating a good external backlink structure so search engines notice your content.  Off-site SEO is largely done through building backlinks to your website from other relevant websites. Sounds easy enough right?  Not! It is probably one of the most time-consuming aspects of SEO and can be costly if done incorrectly and in a number of ways including hurting your campaign budget and ranking as well. Search engines treat back links almost like votes for your site in that if there is a link to your site then there must be something interesting on your site for another site to link to you. However not all links are equal, a link from a page with relevant content to your topic and a good page rank will count higher than an unranked irrelevant site. I often tell clients, do not ever place a link on your own site to another site that has a lower rank than you do and that is not relevant to your website topic. In fact, you should avoid placing any outbound links on your site to another site unless it has a very High PR like PR 6 or above and is so relevant that it is almost necessary and there are only a few sites where that is the case. That said, simply building as many back links to your website as possible is also a bad strategy, it will actually hurt your ranking. Make sure links are relevant and add value to your site even if it takes a long time to get them.

Links into your site are best used in context; these are also known as contextual links or anchor text links. This means that if it uses a relevant phrase to link to your site then the link carries more power. For example:  using anchor text linking with actual text like ‘best SEO services‘ or ‘expert SEO consultants’ will provide better results than using just the website URL by itself like this ‘exampleseosite.com’. You will see if you click on that link above that it goes right to our services website home page. Build links sensibly, using only above-board professional SEO consultants and legitimate websites for linking and you will see real improvements in rankings. Do not try underhanded or what is known in the industry as black hat techniques; they only hurt you in the end.