What Is SEO | SEOinDeep.com

What is SEO? Search Engine Optimisation

Posted by Ilyas | Posted in SEO Newbies | Posted on 03-09-2010

SEO

At a starting level, SEO means Search Engine Optimisation. Basic SEO is how search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo! create the list of sites that are shown when someone types a word or phrase into the search bar. For instance, type in ‘computer’ and the user will be presented with all sorts of websites describing what computers are, selling computers and components, listing uses for computers etc.

The search engine makes a determination as to a) what sites are relevant for the word(s) the user has typed in and b) in what order to list them. This determination is worked out by a hugely involved and complicated algorithm written into the search engine itself. So for the word ‘computer’, the search engine will first look at all the sites which it considers relevant to computers and then display them in an order that it will calculate, based on a series of things.

Having a company’s website be relevant to lots of words or phrases and making it as high up the list of displayed sites as is possible can be worth huge amounts of money in terms of increased site traffic and by extension increased custom. How websites and companies try to make themselves more relevant and higher up the search listings is by optimising their sites for the search engines; hence, Search Engine Optimisation – SEO.

How Does Search Engine Optimization work?

The algorithm each search engine uses is a closely guarded secret, since if it were readily available it would quickly collapse; as everyone would make their sites as high on search and relevancy lists as possible using the algorithm’s criteria as a guide. So for the most part people use an educated guess. Search engine companies like Google do give some hints, especially as to bad practise, and some aspects can be found by trail and error.

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