Internet Marketing - What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization is basically a fancy way to say “Doing things to improve your website rank with the search engines”. Technically it is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to your web site from search engines via "organic" search results. Typically, the earlier a site appears on the search engine results page (SERP), the more visitors it will receive from the search engine.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. The high-level way to describe what SEO includes is On-page vs. Off-page.
On-Page optimization are things that you do to the pages on your website (such as Title, Description and other Meta Tags and Visible Copy)
Off-Page optimization are things that you do externally to your website pages (in-bound links from other websites, Social Networks, etc)

What will make your SEO campaign a success?

To have a successful traffic-generation plan you must completely investigate what your website already has with an internet marketing expert. You must first make sure you have all the appropriate tags, keywords, and coding done correctly on your site before adding anything else. You must optimize this invisible area (the code) of your site so that search engines will find you. Links are also an important aspect of traffic generation. Make sure you are linking to and from other relevant sites and that your internal links have keyword-rich text. Remember, building traffic takes patience and consistent action.

To find out more about SEO and related internet topics join us at my FREE “Branding” and Tea seminar on May 29th, 1 – 4 PM. It will be hosted at the Sixth Avenue House B&B in Asbury Park and the Keynote speaker will be Craig Gunter of INCA Graphic Production.

SEO ‘lingo’ - what do all these terms and abbreviations mean?

• Inbound links: Also know as external links, which occurs when other sites link to your site. It’s generally accepted that a big factor in search engine algorithms (see below) is the number and quality of inbound links pointing to your site.
• Keyword: A word or phrase that is typed into a search engine. Site owners typically want their sites to be visible in the search engines for specific keywords that relate to their product or service.
• Link building: Since inbound (external) links influence a site’s organic rankings (see below); many site owners will undertake the process of link building. This can consist of explicitly asking other sites to link to them, or encouraging inbound links by creating valuable content or tools, posting product reviews or forum comments on other Web sites, or partnering with relevant sites.
• Organic ranking: The position that your Web site appears in the unpaid listings of the search engine results, which typically take up the majority of the page.
• Search engine algorithm: A complex formula that search engines use to compute how to rank site A over sites B to Z. Apparently they are made up of thousands of unique factors, but we will likely never truly know since Search Engines make a habit of not disclosing details.
• SEO: Search engine optimization involves undertaking activities to make your site rank higher in the search engine results. Often it involves attempting to intuit how search engines rank sites and applying industry best practices.
• SERP: Search engine results page, which is the page that comes up after you perform a query in a search engine.
• Sponsored listings/ads: The text ads that typically appear along the periphery of the SERP, such as along the top and the right hand side. Advertisers determine which terms they want their ads to appear for and compete with other advertisers to achieve top positioning