SEO Explained in Plain English
March 19, 2009 – 9:49 pmAs a Freelance Marketing Consultant here in Seattle I am often asked about search marketing, specifically SEO. I am asked by my clients, the designers and copywriters I work with and other marketing folks to explain what it means and you would be surprised at how many people talk about SEO with great anxiety in their voice as if it were - dare I say this - brain surgery.
In fact it’s quite simple. SEO is “making your website ‘optimal’ for the search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) to find and index your website and the content on your site for the purposes of serving up website pages, articles, blog posts and other content on the Internet to people who search within thier search engines.”
How you ‘make your site optimal’ is by having the pages on your website coded properly with the right meta tags (html descriptions) so that it priortizes your site based on what you are promoting on your site relative to the ‘keywords’ (words people type into the search engines) when they are looking for something.
The theory is that the more copy, links to relevant (like-minded) websites and product or content relating to those ‘keywords’ the more likely that you will be listed in the search results page (the free results page that is —- because of course you can always ‘buy’ the keyword you want to be listed for if you are willing to pay the price!)
That’s it. Really - it’s that simple. Now, the only thing is that it takes quite a bit of blood, sweat and tears because you need to develop the content and have the right product descriptions and get those meta tag descriptions written up properly but it doesn’t always have to cost that much if you know what to ask for.
Depending on your budget you can optimize your site with a little creativity, a good developer and a good set of keywords. Still need to know more? Give me a call - I’m no brain surgeon and I’ll talk plain English on any online marketing subject!
