What is SEO?

So okay, I may have gotten a little ahead of myself since for the past four weeks I have been diving straight into ways to tackle SEO on your blog.  So how about I back up about 10 ft and start at the beginning. What the heck is SEO?

SEO stands for “search engine optimization”. The way I like to explain it is that SEO is a bunch of concepts you can get in the habit of using to organize content and information on your site that makes it easier for search engines to crawl and index your site. But SEO only influences ORGANIC search results

The higher your site shows up on a search result, the more likely it is that you will have more visitors to your site.  However, if you want to show up in the paid results area all you have to do is visit Google AdWords. But keep in mind you “PAY”  for those results.

What I’m concerned with, as I’m sure many other bloggers are, is how can I affect the organic search results for FREE by doing it myself. And actually it’s pretty easy. There are some key areas of your blog that you can focus your SEO attention on to get started I’ve listed them below:

• Page Titles
• Meta Descriptions
• URL Structures
• Navigation
• Links
• Images
• Quality Content

Don’t worry I’ll go into more detail on these later. For more information check out Wikipedia’s definition of SEO.

I have decided to create a new weekly series of posts covering the topic of  Search Engine Optimization for bloggers. I will post a new tip every Monday for the next several weeks.   Some of the tips you may already be familiar with but I’m hoping that with each tip you get a better understanding of how Google robots crawl your site. Ultimately using that knowledge to apply those principles to other areas of your web site.

Now I’m not claiming to have hidden secrets that will send you to the top of a Google search.  Also, there are no guarantees on how this will all work for your site. Anyone that promises these things isn’t telling you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  But the principles I will discuss will not only help visitors to your site but will also help search engines index your site. So in my opinion it’s a win-win.