SEO Mastery or Magic? Understand SEO Basics

SEO or “Search Engine Optimization” is the latest buzzword in internet marketing circles. Those that have gotten it right, maintain that it is vital in getting your website or blog noticed. Those that haven’t been able to master SEO, tend to view it as some mystical, magical element of web marketing that may be a lot of hype over nothing.

My personal feeling is that this is a vital marketing tool that can, if executed correctly, can significantly improve your visibility on the web. I am no expert at SEO but I feel that the following analogy may help explain it a little better:

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Take a look at your local Yellow Pages/ Telephone or Business Directories. When you’re listing your business, you usually have three options.

1. A General Listing – these appear in the alphabetical pages of the telephone directory and, in order to locate your number, someone will need to know your business name.

2. A Specialized Listing – More expensive but your business is listed in the business pages of the directory, along with other businesses of the same type. Thus if someone is looking for a plumber, and they look under “Plumbers” in the directory, they will find your number as well as plumbing business.

3. An Advertized Listing – The most expensive option: Your business is listed in the business pages, as above, but the listing is in the form of an advert. It stands out more.

If you were looking for a plumber, would you try option (1); (2) or (3)? Option (1) is generally only an option if someone knows your business name. Most people would thus go to the business pages and look for those listings. A catchy advert would obviously receive the most hits.

The internet is like a huge telephone directory and SEO determines how the search engines view your “listing”. Ignore SEO completely and your “General Listing” will garner only clients that know your web address or those that stumble onto it by accident.

By spending a little time and effort researching and implementing basic SEO, you get yourself a “Specialized Listing”. Your webpage becomes more visible to the search engines and people are likely to find it grouped amongst other websites of a similar nature.

The premium SEO prize is having your webpage come up in the top few search engine results. If you get a page 1 rank on Google, you have achieved SEO mastery. People visit the sites closest to the top of the search engine results first, as these are the ones that have been recommended by the search engine. So SEO mastery is like an “Advertized Listing” in your telephone directory and, just like in the telephone directory, your “Listing” must be more enticing than your competitors.

In the case of the internet, however, this means convincing the search engines that your site is the most relevant and best suited to a particular search term. This takes time and effort as well as a bit of trial and error. You need to play with keyword density – too many keywords in the text and the search engines may think the webpage is spam; too few and it will barely register.

It also means actively marketing your site on the net. Getting quality back-links from other sites improves your ranking in the search engines. Social bookmarking sites are great for increasing your visibility.

The key factor is to regularly evaluate your results and see whether or not your efforts are paying off.