Why Do SEO? and How Does SEO Work?

Why do SEO? Why should you spend the time and effort to learn SEO?

What is SEO (search engine optimization)?

First lets take a quick look at what SEO is. It means “search engine optimization”. Simply put it means to make it easy for the big search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing to find your sites, articles and videos.

How does SEO work?

When you are looking for information you go to the the above search engines and type in what you are looking for. These search engines have gathered information and list sites you can look at. The sites are listed by rank, with the sites they consider the best sites on the first pages you view.

Google Search Engine Page

Those search engines must be able to find your site. They have to decide what your site is about. Then they have to give your site a value compared to the data they have gathered about other sites.

Now they are not reading your whole post. They view your site by the key words. They view your site by the other sites that think your site is valuable (banklinks).

SEO strategies

SEO keywords – Find what keywords people are using. Take those keywords and using them effectively.
Creating back-links – Get links back to the pages you want to draw readers to. This can be done with article marketing, forums, guest posts, social media, comments on other blogs, press releases and social book marking….just to name a few ways.
Having a site map – Get your site map on your sites. On WordPress use the Google XML Sitemaps Plugin – Other sites use XML-SiteMaps.com
Having Webmaster tools – Join Google Webmaster Central. Set up your free account and use those tools to help you rank higher in the search engines.

Why DO SEO?

Now lets get back to what this post is all about. Why use SEO? I found a really great article at StoneTemple.com/ New Data on the Value of SEO. The article shows a survey giving these reasons.

Companies that put effort into SEO saw an increase in traffic as compared to companies that put in very little effort.
SEO can increase site stickiness.
Gain high value for your brand.

The whole article is worth taking a look at.

3 More Reasons to SEO Optimize

It is free targeted traffic – Learn simple SEO techniques for free traffic to you sites, articles and videos. This is targeted traffic. Traffic that is looking for the information you have.
It is simple – Now others might argue with this statement because the search engines are always changing…but the basic foundation of SEO seems to stay the same. Learn SEO basics.
Easy to put into action – Once you know how to find and use key words it is easy to get those keywords into all of your marketing efforts.

SEO Keywords

Finding SEO keywords is next in this series. It is the first step to putting all of this stuff together.

Then we will take a whole new look at using keywords with a guest post.

So there is lots in store for you.

Sheila

P.S. I know this is a lot of data. Why do SEO? It is and easy way for others to find you. As always it gets easier and easier once you know some basic SEO techniques.

Technorati Tags: keywords, SEO

MarthaGiffen says:

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Fantastic break-down of the who, what, and why of SEO! It takes time but if you really want your online biz to succeed, it is a “must do.” As usual, I always get such great information from this blog. I recommend it always for the new marketer. You are the BEST!
MarthaGiffen recently posted..How to Combat Information Overload in Your Online Biz
Leanne Chesser says:

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I totally agree with the importance of SEO and you’ve explained things in a really simple way. I love how you break things down and go over it in a sequential way.
Leanne Chesser recently posted..How to Increase Traffic to Your Blog
John Paul Aguiar says:

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Great Post Sheila.

SEO can be complicated, but if you do the basics, you will see some very nice benefits.

Problem I see is people dont do ANY SEO, or they are not consistent with it, which is how you see the real results.
John Paul Aguiar recently posted..Simple Ways To Increase Your RSS Subscribers
- sheila says:
  
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  Thanks John – that is a real complement!
  
  And I highly recommend that every one reads your post on how to promote a new blog post. http://bit.ly/aLcRWU (nice tools)
  
  I am a big fan of Johns Blog!
Charlie says:

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Here’s a really simple article explaining the essence of the practice.

Useful to understand the ins and outs without having to take an MSc

http://www.makeitdigital.co.uk/sites/default/files/Understanding_SEO.pdf