A Quick and Easy to Understand Guide to SEO

Did you ever wish you had a quick guide to SEO? Well you've come to the right place. Search engine optimization doesn't have to be something cryptic or hard to understand. The basics can be broken down pretty quickly and to a degree where nearly anyone can get caught up to speed with what's going on pretty quickly. This sets the groundwork for further research should you choose to pursue it. For now, let's dig in and get started.

What is SEO?

First things first. SEO is the method used to attract more visitors to a website from search engine searches. This covers a pretty wide range of strategies and techniques that can be used to accomplish this goal. Everything from keyword research, to including quality links to making the structure of a website search engine friendly falls into the category of SEO. There's new innovation in this area all the time. This along with the big search engines like Google often updating their own algorithms that determine how a site ranks makes SEO a field where it pays to have someone who stays on their toes handling this important area.

Why is SEO so Important?

Traffic can come to a website from a number of directions. Social media marketing can generate traffic and using paid traffic sources is also an option for many businesses. The power of SEO is that when it's optimized a site will be getting visitors that are both targeted and free. For a business where more traffic can quickly equal more revenue the importance of this is very clear and obvious. The strength of managing to be ranked through SEO methods on something like the first or second page of Google for certain keywords can't be overstated.

Most experts agree that SEO is probably the most important area for online marketing. It can provide targeted traffic, wider exposure and revenue that's close to impossible to match. Not understanding at least the basics we're going over here in our guide to SEO can leave a business at an extreme disadvantage, to put it mildly.

A Look at the Three Main Areas of SEO

There's three main areas of SEO that even beginners can influence. SEO experts work on a much larger scale, but even a complete newcomer reading our guide to SEO can likely take small (or large) actions around these points and see positive results. 

1. Content. This is where the search engines will scan to see if you're website is worth ranking. Targeting certain keywords and making sure they are present on things like blog posts or articles can increase your chances of ranking greatly. This strategy should be used on all important pages of your site. Remember Google, Bing and the other big search engines will be looking at them all, so why not make an effort to rank them well?

2. Links. Links going to your website from other quality sites will increase your chance of ranking well. Asking business associates, blogs or other appropriate sites to link to your site is a sound strategy. In return you could provide links as well if this fits into your website strategy. Of course only choose options that coincide with your business vision.

3. Site Structure. Making certain errors in site design can cause the search engines to ignore your site. An over reliance on JavaScript or Flash are two classic mistakes. Any text on these types of pages are essentially invisible to Google and will be useless for SEO. There's other site structure points a SEO pro can easily identify to make sure your site isn't getting in the way of your search engine success.

This Guide to SEO is Just the Beginning

Becoming great at SEO takes years and a certain finesse with the subject. That said the information we've just shared will give you a head start if you aren't very familiar with SEO. Even this small amount of knowledge, when applied, can give you a head start beyond the casual website owner who gets their search engine ranking more through chance than anything else. When it comes to SEO, like many things in life, knowledge is power. The good news about opening the door to SEO is that once you have your site optimized and ranking well the results can be life changing!