What Is SEO?

SEO. The weapon of choice in our assault on the Internet. Real Vikings took stormed beaches in long ships, crazy horned hats, broadswords and sweet beards. The Internet is our beach, and SEO is our broadsword. Sorry, you have to provide your own beard.

What Is SEO?

SEO is an acronym for “Search Engine Optimization.” The fact that it’s an acronym proves it’s important. Things that aren’t important don’t get cute little nicknames. But awesome, powerful and life-changing things do: CIA, VIN, FBI, LEE. Wait, that last one wasn’t an acronym, it’s just a cool three-letter name.

The most basic definition is this: SEO is the process of ensuring your website or web pages show up when someone searches for a term or phrase related to your website.

Why should we care about SEO?

Because optimizing our sites for the search engines is what will bring in free “organic” traffic. By “organic” I simply mean that the search engines  – like Google, Yahoo, and MSN – will see that your site is related to a specific search, and list it in the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs – another cool acronym). It’s free because you’re not paying for any of this, it happens automatically.

Let me give you a little example. I’ll explain it from two different perspectives: the web surfer and the web publisher. I’ll play the role of surfer, and you are delightfully cast as the web site owner.

Surfer (me):

I just spilled tomato soup all over my Golden Retriever, and am desperate to find out how to clean him up before his fur turns into Marinara. So I jump on Google and search for the term “How To Get Tomato Soup Out Of Yellow Dog Fur“. I hit the big search button, wait for a couple of milliseconds, then get a whole list of websites that Google thinks are related to my search query. I browse the first couple of results and see a particular option that says:

“How To Get Tomato Soup Out Of Yellow Dog Fur: Easy Step by Step Guide”

I click on it, read the information, cleanse my four-legged friend of his vegetable stains and smile.

Web Site Owner (You):

As an avid dog lover, and local tomato soup critic, you have plenty of experience with the accidental spillage of tomato soup onto house pets. And because you’ve got a website that you probably created as a fan page to SearchEngineViking.com (let’s call it www.FansOfSearchEngineViking.com), you decide to create a page or blog post specifically dedicated to getting tomato soup out of yellow dog fur. You title your page or post:

“How To Get Tomato Soup Out Of Yellow Dog Fur: Easy Step by Step Guide”

See where I’m going with this? Your page showed up in my Google search, so I clicked on it and visited your site. You didn’t pay a single thing for my visit. I didn’t click on an expensive advertisement you placed on another site, I didn’t hear about your page through an expensive world-wide radio advertisement nor did I even know your site existed until I found it through my specific search.

But It’s Not That Easy

Without boring you with random nerdy details, let’s just say that achieving a listing on the first page of Google (or any of the other search engines) usually isn’t as simple as creating a new page. There are millions, if not billions, of websites out there, and most of them have multiple pages. Do the math and you’ll find that there are exactly 100 kajillion web pages living on the Internet.

How in the heck are the search engines going to know that your should be nestled at the top of the list for “How To Get Tomato Soup Out Of Yellow Dog Fur” when there are so many other pages out there? It’s simple: Search Engine Optimization, or, you guessed it, SEO.

SEO isn’t always easy, but it isn’t always hard either. I’ve had sites show up on the first page of the Google SERPs with minimal effort, and I have others that can’t break into the top 10 pages despite constant grooming. It really depends on several factors, like competition, which I promise I’ll go into at a later date.

What Does SEO do?

If you get nothing else out of this long-winded post, remember this: SEO is the process of telling search engines that your site is relevant to a particular search term or phrase and deserves to be at the top of the list.

Remember that and you’ll be ready to start storming the Internet like an official Search Engine Viking. Plus you’ll have a quick answer if “What Is SEO?” comes up during a game of Trivial Pursuit.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 26th, 2010 at 8:08 pm by Lee and is filed under SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.