Understanding the Basics
Why am I writing this blog?
While working my way through the tutorials in WA, I am finding the information both helpful and intriguing. I also find myself getting somewhat lost on occasion. I realized as I progressed that I was missing some of the basics. Not being familiar with a lot of the terminology, I thought it might be helpful to write about some of the terms I had to look up so I would get a better understanding of what was being taught.
I hope this is helpful to some and I also hope that it will inspire dialogue with those who have a better understanding of the topics I am including in my blog. I want to start with the very basics of terms and concepts, particularly Keywords and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
What is a Key Word?
A Keyword is a word or phrase that someone surfing the web might enter into a search field in order to find further information about that word or phrase. Other names that might be used are search query, key phrase or search term. Keywords are essential to the search engine optimization (SEO) process. Search "spiders" or "crawlers"use the keywords or phrases to index your website. Indexing pre-finds or organizes the data so the search engines can locate your address (website).
What is SEO (search engine optimization)?
SEO is a set of actions or a process taken to improve the volume and quality of the visits (traffic) to your website. These activities include such things as coding, PPC (pay per click), use of keywords, link building as well as many others designed to enhance and promote the exposure of a website in search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and others. I will be writing more on these activities in future blogs.
Optimizing your Website
It is important to keep in mind that the goal of optimization is to make your web page or pages pertinent to the keywords you have selected that coincide with what your web page is promoting.
Key elements that affect SEO are: your page title, the structure of your content, cascading style sheets (CSS), headers, META descriptions and ALT tags, validated codes and page load times. Your keywords are important to show the search engines what you're talking about. However, after the first few times you write or include the keywords in your pages (notice there is not an exact number), the benefits start to decrease; and if you use them too much, you run the risk of receiving a manual action. These are explained in Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
The Use of Social Media
One of the most powerful methods of optimizing your website is to use social media. Basically, there seems to be three steps to getting yourself up and running with social media:
- Create a blog related to your website. - Don't worry, the more you write, the easier it gets!
- Provide a link to your website in your blog, IE: for more information click here
- Use your blog to post articles pertaining to your website. Allow for comments and opinions - it is important to share ideas!
In Conclusion
I do not profess to be an expert because and "EX" is a has been and a "Spurt" is something that is generally over with rather quickly and I hope not to be thought of in that fashion. I do hope you found this article somewhat informative and helpful. I know I found it helpful because by writing it I believe I have a better understanding of some of the basics. If any of my more experienced and knowledgeable colleagues find issue with what I have written, please by all means provide corrections and clarifications. My feelings will not be hurt. After all, my main objective is to provide a method of starting a dialogue so we can all learn.
Thanks everybody for your time, patience and feedback
Brett
Recent Comments
2
Well said Brett, you're doing great!