Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Is the Term Every Internet User Should Know
The internet has over 1.3 billion websites, a number that is growing every second. If you’re an online business, a blogger, or even if you want people to find you on Facebook, the only way you can ensure that people find your website among the billions is through the process called search engine optimization(SEO).
Why Do I Need SEO?
How many times have you gone past the first page of search results on Google? If your answer is “never”, then you are with the majority of internet users (the first 5 results get 67% of all clicks). If you have a Facebook profile or page that you want people to find, you need search engine optimization so that Google can list it on that coveted first page of search results. SEO is the technical and creative process that improves rankings, drives traffic and increases awareness in search engines.
How Does SEO Work?
To better understand SEO, it’s important that you have a basic understanding of how search engines work. When you type a question or topic in the search bar, the automated robots of the search engines, called “crawlers” or “spiders”, scurry around the billions of documents and data stored in their datacenters and find all the instances where your search perimeters are matched. Then these crawlers will display the results depending on relevance and popularity. Type “Facebook” in Google and the first result that comes up is the Facebook website, and this is accomplished by search engine optimization.
Relevance and popularity are intrinsically linked with search engine optimization. How search engines determine relevance isn’t just how many times someone has written the word “Facebook” in the content; instead, they determine relevance by striving to provide the best possible result for you. If you want to know the story of how Facebook was created, search engines will try and give you the webpage that provides the best and most accurate information. How search engines determine what the “best” websites include these factors: ease of navigation, professional design, accessible through modern browsers and direct information relevant to the search.
Content Is the Difference Maker
The biggest factor in maximizing the effectiveness of search engine optimization is the content. Developing a website that contains accurate, credible and high-quality content will help ensure that search engines seek yours out for a variety of reasons. Part of how search engines determine relevance is dependent upon how long you will stay on a page after you click on a link. If you click on a page and then quickly hit the back button, search engines will take this data as an indication that it wasn’t the page you were looking for. This lessens the SEO of that website. Therefore, the longer you browse on Facebook, the more it accumulates search engine optimization. An important factor for popularity is determined by how many people create links to your website, so the best way to ensure this happens is by creating content that people can trust and appreciate.
Since search engine optimization is the “best route on Google Maps” equivalent to searching on the World Wide Web, do everything in your power to make sure your website is the best route for people to take.