70 % MKT 13 % MKT % MKT 16 GUIDE TO SEO

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1 70 % MKT 13 % MKT 16 % MKT GUIDE TO SEO Overview Search engines are essentially directories that contain and organize much of the information available on the internet. The three largest search engines are Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Google is significantly more popular than the other two; about 70% of all internet searches are carried out through Google. Search engines send out bots to crawl the internet. These bots read and analyze the web pages they find and organize it within an index. Individuals then access the information in this index by entering search terms. Search terms are often called keywords. Search engines want to give their users what they re looking for. In concept, therefore, search engines select which websites and web pages to display in their index as well as the order in which to display them based on the relevance and value of those pages. The relevance and value of any given web page will vary depending on the keyword being searched. For example, a website that provides information about car insurance may be a highly relevant result for the keyword car insurance, but completely irrelevant for the keyword salt water aquarium. Search engines use complex algorithms to determine which web pages should appear as results for a search query.

2 What is SEO? Put simply, SEO is the process of convincing search engines that your website is the most relevant or valuable result for a specific keyword. Why is SEO important for businesses? Let s say you sell used cars. You can be reasonably sure that anyone who types the phrase used cars into a search engine will be interested in buying one of your used cars, because it s common sense that someone looking for used cars wants to buy one. If you can convince the search engines that your website is the most relevant and valuable result to show to a user who types in used cars, your business will receive a visit from a very interested customer. This makes SEO a core component of any marketing strategy. How does SEO work? The most basic, fundamental step in the SEO process is to make your website as relevant and valuable as possible. Unfortunately, this is not easy. And even if it were, SEO requires more than just creating a great website, because search engines are imperfect they can t judge the relevancy and value of every web page with absolute accuracy. SEO can be broken down into three core components. 1. Content Content refers to what s on your website. This means text, images, videos, whatever your website is saying or communicating to your visitors. This is your content. And when search engines are crawling the web and trying to decide which websites are the most relevant, it makes sense that they would look first and foremost at what those sites are about, what those sites are saying. Here are a couple things to remember about content. Search engines like more content rather than less content. All other things being equal, a website that gives in-depth, detailed information about a certain subject is going to be more relevant and valuable than a website that gives only a brief overview of the subject.

3 Search engines like up-to-date content. If you built a site a long time ago and haven t added any new content or updated the content in a while, search engines likely won t consider the content to be as relevant or valuable. Search engines like original content. Search engines typically don t want to show the same information to their users twice, and in order to prevent this from happening, search engines simply won t include web pages in their results if these web pages contain content that exists on other web pages they ve already indexed. For this reason, it s very, very important to create original content for your website. What makes your company unique? What do you have to offer to the world that no one else can offer in quite the same way? 2. Backlinks In order to determine the value of a web page, search engines need to know whether or not people are finding the web page useful. One of the primary factors search engines analyze in order to determine this A backlink is a link somewhere on the internet that points to your website. Search engines see these backlinks as a sign that other people like your website. If the owner of Website A puts a link on his or her site that points to Website B, this is a sign that the owner of Website A believes Website B is useful or interesting or valuable in some way. A backlink is like a vote of confidence in favor of your website. All else being equal, the more backlinks that point to your site, the higher your site will rank. The quality of the backlinks is important as well. Ten backlinks from a small, mostlyunknown website would not have the same effect as, say, three backlinks from a large, well-known website that the search engines have indexed and found to be relevant and valuable. 3. Architecture Architecture refers to the structure and code of a given web page. The code of a website can have a dramatic positive or negative impact on how that site is perceived and indexed by search engines. Because optimizing the structure and code of a website can sometimes require advanced programming knowledge and this guide is meant for beginners, this section will be fairly brief. That said, there are a few key concepts to keep in mind.

4 In order for search engines to crawl your website effectively, search engines need to be able to find and read everything on your website. Search engines travel from page to page within your site by following the links that connect each page. But if you have a page on your website and there are no other pages that link to this page, it may be difficult for a search engine bot to find the page and read it. If you re not careful, incomplete linking can cause search engines to miss out on major sections of your website. Another common site architecture error that can negatively impact how search engines perceive your website has to do with a concept called canonicalization. This is a big word that refers to a fairly simple concept. Have you ever noticed how some websites show up in your browser address bar as example.com while other websites show up as And have you ever noticed how, for most major websites, regardless of whether you type example.com or you ll still end up at the same website? This is because there are at least two versions of every website that exists. Often, by default, both versions will exist simultaneously on the internet. This can cause problems for search engines, because some of the relevance and value ascribed to your web page through content and backlinks can be split between the two versions of the site. In many cases, this causes both versions of the site to rank lower in search results, whereas if all relevance and value indicators pointed to a single version of the site, it would rank much higher. The solution is to redirect one version of the domain so that it points to the other. This effectively tells the search engines to ascribe all relevance and value to only one version of the site, which typically allows your website to rank higher in search results. How long does SEO take? The time it takes to move a new website onto the first page of search results for a relevant keyword will vary widely based on the industry, the number of competitor websites, the amount of time spent performing SEO work, and many other factors. But even if your web page has made it to the first page, your SEO work is not over. SEO is an ongoing process, because search engines are not static they are constantly updating and reorganizing their indexes. If you want to reach the first page of search results and stay there, your SEO efforts will need to continue over time.

5 Can I do SEO myself? Are you comfortable working with code to adjust the architecture of your website? Are you able to create interesting and valuable content on a regular basis? Are you willing to invest the time to develop relationships with other website owners in order to obtain backlinks? If so, you can definitely start doing SEO yourself. But it will take time and effort. Patience is required. It can take years of slow, steady progress for some websites to move up onto the first pages of search engines. Most SEO companies have developed specific methodologies or systems that allow them to reduce the time involved in the SEO process. In addition to knowledge, expertise, and stability, this is one of the biggest benefits that an SEO company can offer. Some SEO companies can move your website up onto the first page of search engines within just one or two months. There s no question that SEO is important and valuable for businesses. The question of whether to tackle it yourself or hire an SEO company is one you ll have to answer based on your own abilities.