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What Is SEO? A Brief Introduction
When you utilize Google (or any other search engine) to search for a term, perhaps you have wondered how the websites in the initial search results page got there, when there are probably a large number of other competing websites which match your search term? Well, the solution to that question is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Those first few websites had better SEO than their competitors. So, what's SEO? Simply, it is just a marketing strategy used to improve the ranking of a website in search engines.

Some of those websites (such as Wikipedia, Facebook and Microsoft) got to the first search results page without much help from SEO because, their brand names are sufficiently famous to obtain them listed in the initial page. The other websites depend on SEO to obtain them to the first or second search results page. You may wonder why SEO is so important. Well, users rarely go beyond the initial few search result pages when looking for a term. When was the last time you clicked on the fifteenth search results page?

SEO can be done in many ways. The primary (and effective) SEO methods will be the following:

1) SEO titles, headers and URL addresses

2) Back-linking

3) Writing SEO content

4) The usage of multimedia

5) Regular updates

This article will briefly touch on each one of these SEO techniques. Each one of these techniques will be described in detail in subsequent articles.

SEO titles, headers and URL addresses

The title of a webpage differs from its heading. The title is displayed on the 'tab' of this webpage as the heading is displayed in the webpage itself. When you enter a search term (referred to as the keyword), the search engine tries to find websites whose title, heading and URL address matches the given keyword. If the title, heading or the URL address of an internet site matches your keyword, then that website is given a higher ranking than others. For example, if the keyword you entered is "phoenix", an internet site getting the URL address: "http://www.phoenix.com" is given a higher ranking than a website having the URL address: "http://www.mystical_birds.com".

Back-linking

When you search for a website, you will usually see several hyperlinks linking that website to other websites. These links are known as back-links. Wikipedia is a good example for back-links. All the reference websites are listed at the bottom of a Wikipedia article. These hyperlinks (in the bottom of an article) are back-links of the respective reference websites. Back-links increase the ranking of a website. Generally, the more back-links a website has, the higher its ranking.

Writing SEO content

Search engines make an effort to match the entered keyword with this content of websites. For instance, if your keyword is "golf player", the search engine will search for articles getting the term "golf player". However, you will have millions of articles having the term "golf player" in them. The search engine will rank these articles in line with the "keyword density" of the articles. Keyword density is calculated by dividing the number of keywords in this article by the total amount of words and then multiplying the result by 100.

For example, if a hundred-worded article gets the keyword "golf player" repeated twice inside it, the article has a keyword density of 2%. Articles having a keyword density of 0.5-2% are usually given the highest ranking.

The use of multimedia

Everybody prefers graphical websites, in comparison to plain-text websites. The major search engines know this and for that reason; they provide websites containing multimedia (graphics, videos and flash applications) an increased ranking than other websites.

Regular updates

Folks have an unquenchable thirst for new advice. The major search engines address this need giving the websites which are regularly updated a higher ranking than other websites.


We hope that people answered your question "What is SEO?" satisfactorily through this article.


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