People will spend anywhere from a couple hundred dollars to a couple thousand (or more!) on search engine optimization (SEO), yet most have little understanding of the field beyond "this is what I need to do to get on the first page of Google."

While in the most-simple sense this is correct, understanding more about what SEO is and how this field came about can be extremely important in helping you make educated decisions on how much you should be spending on SEO efforts. 

SEO Background

Search engine optimization is the process of targeting keywords to provide increased rankings for web pages on search engines.   This is done by trying to increase keyword prominence in areas that are assumed to be important to the search engines indexing and ranking algorithms for web pages.

SEO came about from a fundamental question that needed to be answered during the early days of the Web: "How will users find information they are looking for?"  Enter the search engine. 

The search engines' task is to allow a visitor to enter keywords and then provide a listing of useful results of web pages on which to find more information.  The search engine must be able to find websites, interpret the content of the provided page, and index and archive the results so that they can be quickly found when someone does a search.  It is essential to the livelihood of the search engine that the results are useful and accurate to the initial request.   If people do not find what they are looking for enough times, they will go somewhere else.  Therefore the indexing and ranking strategy has to produce the most useful and accurate results possible.  The search algorithm has to take in account a lot of different facets of the webpage it is looking at to determine when and where the results should display based on a given request.  This is extremely complex and because of the sheer volume of web pages, it has to be done through an automated process.

In the early days, the algorithm to determine page rankings could easily be manipulated (this is what is usually referred to as "Black Hat SEO").  It was found that by saturating the content of the page with keywords (keyword stuffing, invisible content, link farms), one could easily rank higher for a given keyword.  Because of this, sites that may have little or nothing to do with the initial search would show up in the top results.    The major search engines needed to combat this head on or risk losing all of its visitors.  For a long time, it was a cat and mouse game between the major search engines and these "Black Hat SEO" providers.  One side was exploiting loop holes while the other was trying to fix them in a way that was fair and accurate for legitimate pages.

Search engines are now a lot smarter than they used to be.  If you do a search on any major search engine you will most likely find what you are looking for and, for the most part, links are reputable.  Tricks of the past, like "Black Hat SEO," no longer work and are usually penalized for their attempts.  The Algorithms for indexing results are closely guarded and continually evolving.  No one really knows for sure what all the attributes are that are being assessed and how they weigh in.  Fortunately though, there are practical guidelines established by search engines, along with best practices, that are known to produce results. 

The practice of SEO is now embraced by search engines (when done correctly) because it can help them correctly identify what the content is for a certain page and determine its relevancy.  SEO, when done in this way, is considered a respected and important field relating to the Web. 

The key now is that your content is well organized, relevant to the chosen topic of the page, and the most important keywords you want someone to find your page with are evenly distributed in a meaningful way throughout your content.  Below are some useful tips for SEO:

• Start with keywords.  How do you want someone to find your page?  It helps to be specific when selecting keywords.  For example, if you were an Italian restaurant in Buffalo, you wouldn't target the keywords "Italian Restaurant", but rather '"Italian Restaurants Buffalo".
• There is no way to guarantee that you will end up as number one on Google/Bing/Yahoo!   Effective campaigns will benchmark where you are and track increases in position based on goals for the campaign.
• There are other important attributes to your site besides just keywords and content optimization.  This can be the establishment of business, length of time you have owned your domain, number of inbound links, and traffic.
• Look at the content of each individual page.  You probably don't need to optimize every single page of your site.  You should optimize those pages that have the most benefit to your target audience, based on specific keywords.  If you are in a smaller local market, you may just want people to find your home page.
• Make sure the firm or person providing your SEO services is reputable.   Because this is an emerging field that is very vague, there is the potential to get burned by overpriced services or companies that try to bully you into doing more than you really need.

For more information on the new Fission SEO packages,contact a 360 PSG account manager today.