What Is SEO

If you're pretty new to the whole Internet Marketing game, you've probably been slammed by a deluge of new terminology. It's exciting and frustrating at the same time; it's exciting because you can't wait until you can use these words in their proper context, but it's frustrating because it feels like it's going to be forever before everything comes together for you. What Is SEO anyway? It stands for "Search Engine Optimization" and is basically the science of getting your website ranking for certain keywords or keyphrases in search engines like Google. I'm going to teach you more about just how it works and how you can start ranking for keywords ASAP.

1. Why Would You Want To?

I'm not going to go into a lot of detail here, but I'm just going to tell you the most important stuff, the stuff you need to know to make money online. There are different types of keywords/phrases that you appear in search engine results pages for. Let's test your understanding: which one of the following do you think it would be more valuable to appear on the first page of the search results for:

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a. "golf balls"
b. "Callaway golf balls"
c. "buy Callaway golf balls"

C's the right answer, isn't it? The defining keyword that sets it apart from the other two keyphrases is the word, "buy". People who are typing this keyphrase in want to, surprise surprise, buy Callaway golf balls. B is better than A because it uses a specific brand name, meaning people already know which brand they want in particular. If you're able to rank on the first page of Google for C, you can potentially make a lot of money online.

2. Types of SEO

There are on-page and off-page SEO methods. On-page has to do with keyword/phrase positioning and frequency. It is believed that when search engines check your webpage/site to see if it is worthy of ranking, it checks from top-left to bottom-right. If you can somehow make it so that your keywords/phrases are arranged diagonally in this fashion, this might make the search engines more likely to rank you higher.

More importantly are the off-page SEO methods which Google in particular uses to see who deserves to be on top. You need one-way links from other websites linking to your website. Furthermore, these links have to have your desired keyword/phrase as the "anchor text", or in other words, the text that is the link. The more of these you have, the more likely search engines will place you higher on their pages for that keyword/phrase.
3. How To Get Links

OK, so you're not asking "what is SEO" anymore, but there are still a few things you aren't very sure about, like how to actually get links from other websites pointing towards yours. Unless you are really nice and can get people to link to your website by asking them politely, you aren't going to appear anywhere in Google or other search engines.

Most people use article directories to build these links. It is time consuming, but it is among one of the more well-known ways to get more links towards your website.

I'm afraid that I can't completely answer the question, "what is SEO?" in this article. There are a lot of things that you still don't know. Keep on doing research and if there's anything you're unsure about, get in touch and I can tell you more about it.