What is SEO Marketing?
Beginners in internet marketing often ask the question, "What is SEO?" The term is an abbreviation for "
search engine optimization
". It refers to the process of making a website search engine friendly in order to get sufficient ranking in the search engines.
What is a search engine?
On the internet, a search engine is used by browsers. The purpose of the search engine is to direct the browsers to websites that are related to the word or phrase that they use to search. Basically, optimization of your web pages prompts the search engines to display your website to browsers. The end result traffic!
So, what is SEO marketing?
I have searched and searched for a definition of SEO marketing to no avail. In my opinion, SEO marketing is just a fancy term that was probably developed by people who engage in search engine optimization. My guess is they are trying to designate it apart from search engine marketing (SEM).
In my eyes, SEO marketing refers to the process of optimizing web pages and getting incoming links to the website to make it more desirable to the search engines. In other words, to get an organic listing in the search engines which produces free traffic as opposed to paying for traffic. SEM marketing is actually a combination of SEO efforts and paid advertising that gets your website listed in the search engines.
What is the cost of SEO traffic?
Traffic obtained through an organic listing in the search engines is actually free. There are some costs and lots of time put into a SEO website, but if the optimization is successful, you will get a top listing in the search engines. If the content of your website, your products and services are desirable and presented well through your content you will be more likely to convert the visitors into customers.
Have you heard that search engine optimization is dead?
Search engine optimization
used to be a popular, specialized technique; however, the search engines have pretty much mastered the art of providing relevant websites to browsers through top listings. SEO tricks just don't work anymore. However, there are a few things that survived the reprogramming of the algorithms that actually make the search engines' ranking decisions. They include:
- Proper use of keywords in meta tags
- Natural use of keywords in website content
- Link popularity
The meta tags and the content serve the purpose of letting the search engine spiders know what your webpage is about. The search engines are looking for keyword relevant content -- real content. Stuffing pages with keywords used to work, but not anymore. In fact, overusing keywords is the worst thing that you can do if you want an organic listing.
Link popularity refers to incoming links from relevant websites. Before the search engines figured it all out, reciprocal links aided in getting ranked, but that is an outdated SEO trick. Trading links or joining link farms won't do much good. The key to getting quality incoming links to your site is providing useful content pages that other website owners will be happy to link to.
Article marketing
, getting directory listings and participating in related forums and blogs also helps.
How do you build a SEO website?
Building a SEO website starts with
keyword research
. Through the research, you will find SEO keywords that can be used in your content pages and meta tags. Use the keywords to develop the web pages. Each webpage should have a file name, title, description and headline that use a specific keyword. Secondary keywords should also be identified to use on the page and then the content of the page can be developed naturally using the primary keyword and secondary keywords. After you have a number of quality information pages on your site, you can start activities to develop link popularity.
If you need help with keyword research; development of titles, descriptions and headlines; and development of content,
Website Content Providers does offer all of these as part of our services.
I hope that I have clearly answered the questions, "What is SEO?" and "What is SEO marketing?" Search engine optimization is not dead; however, it has changed drastically in recent years. Provide what the search engines want quality content based on high demand keywords and your chances of getting top ranking in the search engines is greatly improved.
What is a Web Search Engine?
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