SEO 101

SEO vs. SEM
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) "is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results," according to Wikipedia. Search Engine Marketing refers to paid online efforts such as AdWords, banner ads or Facebook ads to drive Web site traffic.

Why Care about SEO?

• US Internet users spend an average of 17 hours per week online.
• 65% of Internet users look for information about various products and services on the Internet and buy online
• 22% of users have a specific search engine dedicated as their home page.
• 66% of Internet users make purchases online.
• 52% of Internet users do not click on online ads.

What does SEO include?
SEO is not just about keywords or programming or links. In fact, it is a heavily evolving myriad of multiple elements that help your Web site rise to the top of the organic search effort. Some measurables that pertain to your SEO ranking include:

• Page Rank
• Page Speed
• Hits
• Relevancy
• Frequency
• Bookmarks
• Programming elements
• Links
• Listings
• Keywords
• URL Structure
• Domain redirects

Some of these items require the ability to navigate and edit a Web site's code. However, other elements, such as external links, hits, bookmarks, frequency and relevancy are easier to manage. Efforts to drive Web site traffic often assist with improving many of these efforts and include maintaining a news page on a Web site, social media and local listings.

Page Rank
The primary item - Page Rank - is unfortunately the least definable. Yet, it is believed that quality external links significantly contribute to boosting this score. Read an older post about what qualifies as quality. this is how Google defines Page Rank:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

And this is how HubSpot defines the scoring system in their article The Importance of Google PageRank: A Guide For Small Business Executives:

0-3: New sites or sites with very minimal links
4-5: Popular sites with a fair amount of inbound links
6: Very popular sites that have hundreds of links, many of them quality links
7-10: Usually media brands (NYTimes.com), big companies or A-list bloggers.

Call Marketicity to learn more about SEO, and it's importance to your business.