Wednesday, January 16, 2013

SEO: What is it? How can it help?



SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is the process of getting internet traffic routed to you based on the content of information in your website, video, or other listing. This process ranks you based on the relevance of data contained in your source. One of the great aspects of search engine optimization is that there’s no charge for the service since it’s based on the content of your data within your website, video, or other listing. For purposes of this research, I’ll focus my attention to that of a website and the data contained within it.

The purpose of SEO is to help the information on your website become more accessible. In order to ensure the data on your website is relevant to that being searched for, SEO utilized various ranking factors to determine how your site compares in relevance to that of another. SearchEngineLand.com shared the following periodic table of SEO ranking factors to shed some light on what all is considered in the ranking process. 



While there are many things that go into the ranking process, there are a few tips to help get your ranking up by taking a few preventative measures. The use of the ALT attribute can help capture a larger audience since it allows you to add alternate text to describe an image which also provides an opportunity to increase your rating by utilizing key words which will better clarify the data which is on your site. Another tip is to avoid the use of word clumps. Word clumps is the grouping of keywords which can often be picked up as spam on your website and will then lower your ranking in the SEO.
Overall, SEO is a great way to route traffic to your website, video, or other information you have on the web. Through following these simple tips and presenting a well groomed website, you’ll be able to increase your SEO ranking and become better accessible on the web.
 
References:


4 comments:

  1. Alt text is not only useful for SEO but can also be used to make your site more accessible. This allows for people with disabilities to use the site more easily. It would be interesting to find out how to track analytics on alt text. If possible, you could find out how many users use the accessibility of the site.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you for sharing. I enjoyed the read.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I've heard about "true costs" of SEO. I know there are companies that have services pertaining to SEO. I am curious as to how effective personalized efforts are vs. consultants, and fees? I'm also curious as to what website designers, etc. bundle SEO into their offering.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I love that periodic table. Super interesting

    ReplyDelete