Member Article

What is search engine optimisation (SEO)?

Hi, some of you may not know me yet. I am Karl Hudson of GetMediaWise. I have specialised in SEO services and technologies for over 7 years. Today, I make a living providing SEO services to clients and also rank my own affiliate sites (this will be explained later).

I figured the best way to start is from the beginning - the bare-bone basics of what SEO is and how it can help improve your online exposure and ultimately attract more visitors to your site.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. I know, it seems a bit dull right? You were probably expecting some form of super explanation for a really cool acronym. Search engine optimisation is the act of optimising and improving your website in terms of readability, linking structure, outbound links etc., that ultimately leads to better ranking of your web site on whatever search engine (Google, BING, Yahoo, ASK, etc.) your web site appears on.

SEO is a skill-set that has to be mastered by someone who remains very active in the niche, on forums, reading webmaster tool etc. because search engines regularly launch updates and it’s important that web sites are optimised to rank after updates have been applied. Indeed, some months can see anything up to and beyond 30 minor and major changes to a search engine algorithm*.

Every website needs SEO

That’s a pretty bold statement. But it’s true, every website on the internet requires SEO and here’s why:

Let’s imagine you’re this guy in the desert with no way of knowing which direction you’re going. You may, by chance, find an oasis but it would be by utter luck.

In this analogy your website is the oasis and the guy is your visitor or potential customer. If you don’t setup your website correctly and effectively or target the right words, how will your customer ever find you? They would in fact end up very thirsty trekking all over the desert trying to find (your) oasis or die trying. Naturally, you would want them to find your oasis, but they may find someone else’s!

Are people switching on to SEO?

Search engines began in the US, which is why if you do any local search for local terms in America, everyone seems pretty switched on to SEO. Take a look at this example.

Now, in the above two comparisons I have compared the keywords “plumber new york” to “plumber newcastle upon tyne”. Now you may not have noticed much of a difference. However, the Newcastle results show a lot more directories (i.e. Ratedpeople.com, thomsonlocal.com, 192.com, yell.com, checkatrade.com and mybuilder.com) rather than specific plumbers offering services. That is 6 out of 10 of the 1st page showing paid directories.

Whereas, New York only has 2 or 3 directory pages, meaning a lot more websites and website owners are actively creating a website and getting it ranked (or moved up the results ranking) in search engines. However, this isn’t definitive as there are ways of checking whether or not these guys engage in SEO practices. I will cover this in another article soon).

The above shows that the UK is still switching on to SEO. In the forthcoming articles I will explain the different theories that people have used in relation to SEO and will also be running a case study to show you, live, how we can get a website from not ranking at all to ranking competitively in its target market.

Till the next time,

Karl Hudson

GetMediaWise Ltd

http://www.getmediawise.com

*a search engine algorithm is what search engines use to calculate whether or not a site is of good quality and also where to place them in the search engine results pages

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Karl Hudson .