What Is SEO / Search Engine Optimization?

What Is SEO / Search Engine Optimization? SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” SEO is the process of getting traffic from the organic search results that come up on search engines when someone types something in to Google or Yahoo. All major search engines such as Google and Yahoo give results when someone types in a query into the box. All website pages, images, videos are content that Google’s bots read to decipher what is on a page and where that page belongs in reference to how people are searching for things. This is often based on Geolocation so as an example I live in Southern Oregon so people in Medford Oregon are more likely to see this post than someone in San Francisco California who has more bloggers writing about this topic.

SEO is made up of several parts:

Backlinks: Links internally and externally from pieces of content, embedded in images, etc. This help Google tell how many places you are connected to. This is why many web developers put their link at the bottom of a site that they built so that people on the site could find them as well as so that their site is getting that credit.

Content: Blogs, Images, and Videos that can be read by Google’s bots. Content is key to an SEO strategy with the best content being both on your site and linked back to your site from influencers like bloggers or new outlets that have an article about your company.

Domain: Your domain actually tells Google a keyword that you are trying to rank for. I want to rank for variations of Branding so writing content on branding will do more because my main domain has brand in it. If I was a plumber in San Francisco the best domain would be San Francisco Plumber or a similar keyword that would be searched by a customer.

Keywords: Words both in the content and in the backend that Google’s bots can read. the Keyword that I used for this article is What Is SEO / Search Engine Optimization? It’s a longer keyword that fewer people would search for, but a more specific user is one that you can better serve.

Tracking: Linking your site to softwares that analyze the traffic going to the site like Google Analytics, Bing/Yahoo Analytics, Hotjar, etc.