SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the art and science of getting your page or site or blog found when people search for content or products like yours.

But there’s a lot of misinformation out there about SEO,  so it makes sense to start with what SEO is not!

SEO IS NOT: 

• Filling a page with keywords and awkward phrases over and over
• Buying or placing hundreds of links into directories
• Buying or placing lots and lots of links on other people’s websites
• Stuffing URL’s, page title or descriptions with a bunch of keywords
• Buying or creating lots of bad content just to have content on your site
• Duplicating the content from canned websites

SEO is also not about doing something once and thinking it’s done!  It’s a process that you need to learn and do, over and over again.

Now that you know what SEO is NOT, it’s time to define what it is

SEO is really about giving your visitors something worth reading.  Or doing.  Or bookmarking and revisiting later.  Or sharing.  But at the same time, it’s about playing by Google’s rules so your site or blog will show up in the search results.

So SEO is about:

• Content.  Good, original content that makes sense with the keywords that brought someone there in the first place is the foundation of SEO.  Different kinds of content (like articles, videos, pictures, and Podcasts)  make it even better for the search engines and the people who come to your site.
• Keywords.  Keywords are the terms and phrases people use to search for sites like yours.  Solid keyword research and the use of those terms appropriately on your site is foundation step in an SEO project. If you don’t understand how people search for what you’re selling, you won’t show up on their search engine results page.
• Links.  Meaningful links from other related sites to yours, from your site to other trusted sites, and among the pages on your own site are all critical to the SEO equation.
• Structure.  Both the search engine spiders and your human visitors need to be able to move around your site and find what they want.  A simple, easy-to-navigate structure with few barriers is also part of SEO.
• URL.  Good SEO means that the URL of your site, and each page includes clear information about what is on the page.  For instance, this page’s URL is https://onlinezen.net/what-is-seo.
• Titles and meta-descriptions.  SEO is also about making sure page titles and subtitles provide good information about what the section is about.  And meta-descriptions act as the welcome sign to draw searchers into your site from the search results page.
• Mobile-ready. With the majority of the new searches coming from mobile devices, it’s not surprising that Google has now made “responsive design” a part of SEO. Sites that don’t perform well on phones and tablets will now also be penalized in search even when the searcher is using a desktop computer.

There are other factors in SEO, but knowing the basics is critical to getting your site well on its way to performing successfully in search.