SEO for Dummies.
Two quick facts before we get started:
- Searching has become the dominant way to find a product or service in western economies.
- 65% of searchers don't look beyond the first 10 results.
It's imperative that your site ranks well for the terms that people are using to describe what you provide.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for the Non-Professional (or for Dummies)
The algorithms used by the search engines are not public (it's kinda in their interest to keep them trade secrets, so if someone tells you "I know all 37 parts of the google algorithm" you know he's an idiot and a liar and probably still works at Walmart.). But we do know that they have more than 300 moving parts. We also know they change more than three times per day. So, the process isn't something that a Search Marketing Expert can really describe (because it's outdated by the time he's figured it out). Even the best Search Engine Marketing experts are simply testing and retesting ideas that may or may not work.
Now that that disclaimer is out of the way (thanks legal. /sarcasm), here is an oversimplified, but hopefully useful, Search Engine Optimization analogy:
Let's say that the way that search engines rank content could be simplified into two parts:
[What the hell is this site about?] and [How many people think this site is good at, well, whatever it is about]Those are the two main questions that search engines ask when ordering the information on the internet. The answer to the first question is optimized by changing what is on your website so that search engines can
- read what is on the page
- know what the page is about
- know how much information you can provide on whatever it is about.
And the second is measure by the number of sites that link to you.
Well, that was confusing; let's go back to analogy land.
Search Engine Optimization Analogy Land
Let's pretend you are driving around looking for a specific item to purchase. What influences you to go inside a shop?
You probably are paying attention to a few things even before you go inside:
- the name of the business
- what's displayed on the signs
- the size of the building
- the opinions of other people.
Why your Website Name Matters
Just like in the real world if you are looking for groceries you probably wouldn't want someone to suggest Pet Supermarket, when a search engine serves up results for a search, they look at your site's name.
It should be able to express some shard of what you provide. Although the name is not the end all solution and can be overcome with time, (for example, you can find a lot of things at Walmart that have nothing to do with Walls) but naming your business what you do is generally a good boost for someone just starting out.
Walmart however didn't want to do that because they actually don't want to explain what they sell in the title because "poorly-made-crap-from-overseas-that-we-negotiated-below-the-price-of-production-to-drive-people-out-of-business-and-brought-to-you-by-staff-intentionally-paid-less-than-the-poverty-level-and not-offered-enough-hours-to-feed-their-family-or-qualify-for-benefits-mart" wouldn't be a good name.
We wouldn't take you on as a client anyways.
Put some signs up!
Another thing that influences people in the real world is signage, and this affects the search engine results even more than the website name. Signage online is kinda like your headlines and your titles on the website. If they don't describe what you are looking for (or at least something related) you probably won't go inside (in the same way if they don't describe what you offer, the search engines won't give you good results.
Hidden below the surface is another type of sign that only search engines can see. It's called a metatag, and it literally means "data about data." It attempts to tell a search engine the abbreviated version of what's on your site. It's kinda like the billboard that says "Crap you don't want at Walmart west 3 miles on left." Like this billboard, this only works if you business is in fact "west 3 miles on the left." If you put up a billboard (MetaTag) that gives the wrong directions (let's say Crapmart is actually east), you will piss people off and lose business.
SEO for Dummies Translation: Don't stick words in your metatags that aren't on your website a lot (and we mean a lot).
Bigger is Better
Let's say you look at all of these things so far and decide to drive to the business. You get there and it's the size of mouse hole and looks like it might fall apart at any moment. You probably won't go inside.
The size of the building and the size of the site matter alot. The larger your site is (number of pages, documents, images, etc you have) the more likely you are to find what you need there, just like in the real world.
Also just like in the real world, where you demand a certain level of cleanliness and upkeep to the structure, search engines demand you not have poorly written or outdated code on your site.
What do you think? Your Reputation Matters.
The last thing that really matters (and this matter more than anything else online) is what other people say about a company. For example, if your friends all say to go somewhere (or not to go somewhere, cough, Walmart, cough) you generally take their word for it (unless they the village idiot or just have really bad taste).
In the same way, getting a link to your site (for example crowdsourcing advertising) does two things: it tells the search engines that I like the site and what I believe it is about. This helps answer both questions and does the heavy lifting to improving a sites ranking.
On the other side of the coin is a recommendation from a questionable source. Let's pretend that you were walking down the street and a man with one tooth suggested a certain resturaunt to you, what's your reaction? In the same, way a link from a site that does illegal or irritating things can actually be harmful.
Search Engine Optimization Methodology
Before we even start with Optimizing your site, we are going to run a keyword statistical analysis that shows us all the possible words that people could search for when looking for your product and the number of people who search for them monthly.
Then we go back to our two questions:
[What the hell is this site about?] and [How many people think this site is good at, well, whatever it is about] and see if we can explain our vastly oversimplified analogy as a mathematical formula:
Let's say that the answer to the first question [What the hell is this site about?] is a percentage and it gets multiplied by the number attained by [How many people think this site is good at, well, whatever it is about] is your search engine results value.
Or X% * Y = search engine value
Highest Values go first in the search results.
Now it's a little more complicated than that, but you should have a good idea as to what we try and do to optimize a site. We improve your site's own content so that you have a higher percentage result to the first question and then we help you get links so that your number of referrals is high.
Yeah, that's about it.
You certainly don't need more information before you are ready to get a quote, but we decided to provide it anyways.
Check out our case studies (listed below as well, because we are so convenient)
V-Room Search Engine Optimization Case Study
