What is SEO?
SEO is Search engine optimisation. And you may well ask - what is that? Before March of this year (2006) I had not come across SEO either. However once you build a website for pleasure or business it is something that you will need to pay attention to, unless of course you never want any visitors to your site; if that is the case stop reading now. Perhaps SEO should be considered even before the website is built. What is your web site for? What do you hope to gain from it?
I did not consider any of these questions when building my first site. As an English Lit and Philosophy student I also had no idea how to build a web site. But I had a few advantages. Firstly I had lots of time, and perhaps fairly importantly my studies had taught me how to research and learn new subjects. So off I went - Building Websites for Dummies was a great initial investment. I built a site (Santiago de Compostela), but no-one came to visit. I could not have that.
So I started to learn what SEO, Search engine optimization is, sometimes called search engine marketing. Now being a student at the time and living in a foreign country, (I always do), I did not have a lot of cash to throw at the problem. That was just as well, as I have found out since that most of the automated submission programs are not great and not anywhere as good as their spiel.
SEO, simply put is getting your business (site) noticed. This is the best way I can explain it. Nobody would consider opening a non-internet business and not telling anyone about it. So that means a bit of marketing. Let the local paper know, put up some adverts, print business cards and hand them out, cold call maybe, but whatever it takes that’s what you would do; and maybe take advice from others when you don’t know what to do? Well SEO is just the same. Your business card is your URL and you want as many people as possible to have your business card (URL).
Just one problem now though. The business card has to get into the right hands - no use leaving them with people that don’t speak your language. They will not understand and will not therefore see any use in it. It is the same thing with links to your URL. The site should speak your language, is there something similar between your site and where the link is coming from? Because that is what we want.
More later.
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