SEO and keywords

[PDRD]

Hi all.

Online marketing and websites are not my forte. Can someone please explain the above two phrases? What do they do? what do they mean? How do I get them?

Thanks
Phil

Sorry for being dense.

Sent from my GT-I9305 using UK Business Forums

 

[BusinessDeli]

SEO - Search Engine Optimisation. The internet dark arts for improving 'ranking' of your website in search engines.
Keywords are combined as words and phrases and entered into both metadata and text (copy) on the webpages that are then recognised by Google et al search algorithms for ranking purposes.

 

[trishmullen]

Hi all.

Online marketing and websites are not my forte. Can someone please explain the above two phrases? What do they do? what do they mean? How do I get them?

Thanks
Phil

Sorry for being dense.

Sent from my GT-I9305 using UK Business Forums

Phil,

SEO has changed so much in the last year with Google slapping down many of the big sites that had been at the top of the search engines for years in some cases. Why did they do this? They did it because those sites had no 'relevance' - i.e. they were SEO'd through the Ying Yang and stuffed with keywords that had no relevance to the actual website.

SEO SIMPLIFIED

The best way to describe those SEO stuffed sites is to think of times when you've gone to Google and typed a word or phrase into the box there. You've probably then had to try about 10 websites before you find 'relevance' to your search term. Relevance is what Google is giving authority to. If your website is about 'how to cure back pain' for example and I put that phrase in, your website should be able to provide the solutions to that and I should be able to find this easily. If not, you will be penalised by having your website shoved far down in the rankings. That is a very simplistic explanation of how it is working. I recently watched a video by one of the Gurus at Google whose advice is "the best SEO is no SEO" - the content in your website needs to be written with only the customer or visitor in mind and not the search engines. Obviously, you will need to target keywords, but they must be relevant.

KEYWORDS

Here's the tool for checking out keywords and how many people are searching for them each month.

You Tube Videos on how to use the Keyword Tool

Hope this helps

Trish

 

[Matt121]

SEO = search engine optimization

It's a strategy which seeks to better your ranking on search engines, such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

Keywords are another thing, although they do play a part in SEO as well.

For example, a blog. People do not just plainly write for their blog, they inject keywords into their content that can be found by search engines to help their blog get more readers.

 

[URBAN COLOUR]

Great replies, I have never really done any seo etc but this makes it clearer. Especially the update on Google and relevance.

 

[PDC]

For me I've always seen this as two things, when we first started out with a website many moons ago there was much talk about search engine optimisation for websites which, then, was all about making them correctly coded and easy to read for the search engines.

In the past two or three years this term seems to have become its own industry with people selling 'seo' more as a service more involved in massaging search engine results though external means.

 

[webgeek]

The "best SEO is no SEO" is a reference to the recent penalties that Google have issued to stop webmasters from over-optimising their sites.

SEO is concerned with helping site owners to craft their web copy, page titles, meta descriptions, image names, etc, so as to maximise search rankings while at the same time providing a great user experience. In addition to the website being tuned, SEO is concerned with building high quality inbound links to help the site rank highly on search engines, since those search engines rely on inbound links as 'votes' of popularity, authority and importance.

Keyword selection is done prior to that SEO work, so that things are crafted based on those targeted keywords. The selection of keywords will take a look at search volumes, competion, existing rankings and the extent to which those terms are a part of the 'buy process' and not terms strictly being used for research/information.

A classic example is 'weather in Dubai' versus 'hotels in Dubai'. While the former may have a lot of search volume, it will rarely result in sales of hotel rooms. Equally, search terms like 'cheap hotels in Dubai' or 'hotel room discounts in Dubai' are much more likely to be a part of the buying process.

SEO is no more a dark art than is buying a banner aid, posting a press release or writing a blog article. In fact, much of SEO is concerned with content marketing.