What is SEO?
(Click here for a more advanced and in-depth definition of SEO)
Many may know what SEO is while others are new to the term and its acronym.
SEO = Search Engine Optimization.
SEO is a solution developed to achieve a goal; this goal is to reach the top results of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
The function of a Search Engine is to provide relevant results based on a limited textual search. The words placed into the "Search Box" are called "keywords" (also referred to by us as "keywords", "keyterms" and "keyphrases").
A Search Engine like Google has literally billions of pages of website content in its Index. It then uses highly complex algorithms to sort and choose which content page out of those billions is the most relevant to your search term and which pages are 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc.
What does Google look at to decide relevance?
The specifics of what Google looks for in a website are a tightly-held secret at Google but we SEO's have been able to peal back the curtain by constantly researching and testing against the Search Engines. SEO's also keep many of their own revelations of the Search Engine algorithms as trade secrets. This is another reason why it is advisable to hire only experienced SEO's.
Content is King: Textual content, whether it is found in the body of a webpage or in the code of the page, allows for the keywords to be provided for the Search Engine spiders to read. There are numerous coding tags that can be used to present information to the spiders.
Google then reads through the coding side of your website and evaluates the relevance of the page based on the words used and also the words used in links to that page.
Links within and from without a site are very important as they tell Google what the content should be about and also how 'trusted' a site is.
It is important that the links be of quality relevance and that they be as natural as possible. Unnatural links, if found to be too spammy or unreal, can potentially hurt you.
Google looks at all of the content on your website and since Google is, in essence, a directory, it must catalog and categorize all of it's own spidered content. Therefore it is important that your site be categorized correctly.
Meteorsite uses our own process for categorization in both a hierarchical and relevential manner. By using a system based on taxonomical labeling we are able to categorize sites in a manner that is well accepted and promoted by the results in Google.
Many don't realize that Google, early on, bought a company and its technology which focused on the relationship between words (i.e. relevance by usage). This is a large part of the algorithm that handles relevance in Google.
We hope this provides you with a basis in which you can see the true goals and processes of a Search Engine's organic aspect.
If you would like to learn more about SEO, we have posted some basic tips on SEO here.