Search engine optimization (SEO) is a great solution to anyone who wants to drive traffic to their site. But what is this bizarre thing known as search engine optimization — what does it even mean, and how can it possibly help your website?

On the internet, most people access websites via search engines or other sites. Since therer are billions of web pages search engines, like Google, act as filters for content. That being said, it is very important for your website to appear on the first few pages of those search engine results.

In general, nobody will look on the 99th page of a Google search result set! That would take forever, and the most relevant results are usually placed first. So how do you make your website “relevant” in the search engine’s eyes? How can your website appear on the first few pages of the results?

Results pages are driven by keywords. Keywords are the typical phrases a user types in when searching such as “web design texas”. You must match your website content (and intent) to the keywords people will be searching for, and then optimize for these keywords.

That’s where search engine optimization comes in. When people use search engines, they type in certain keywords, and the program behind the search engine looks for these keywords in the domain names, file names, and content of the website.

If there is careful repition of certain keywords, the search engine tends to place that website higher on the list of results, because it would be marked as “more relevant” to the search input. Websites that are only somewhat relevant, according to the search engine software, are put further back. Since you want your website to appear at the front, how would you use search engine optimization to your advantage on your webpage?

Well, you first need to pick a keyword. There are many ways to do this —- you can simply pick what the most relevant phrase to the website is, or you can choose to use different software to help you choose your keywords.

First, there is the Overture Keyword Lookup, which helps to tell you whether the keyword that you are considering using is actually being typed in as a search entry by anybody. This is obviously very important because if you had a great website filled with this keyword and nobody searched for it would be a waste of effort. Nobody would visit your site anyway!

So, you need to ensure that you have chosen a good keyword by checking to see if people search it. Another software tool often used by website owners is the Google Keyword Selector. This software helps you to find what the most commonly related phrases and keywords are. While this may sound fairly useless (why would you use that? You’d have to enter in a keyword to get other keyword phrases! That’s not helpful at all, right? Wrong!), it’s necessary for different pages on your site to have different keywords that are targeted and optimized.

Because there are so many billions of websites on the Internet, it’s likely that the keyword you picked has also been chosen by many other people. If you use a general keyword in this case, such as “Frisbee”, then it’s likely that there are tons of other sites dedicated to Frisbee that are greatly relevant, and yours may not be showcased on the first few result pages.

However, with the Google Keyword Selector, you can find keyword phrases related to “Frisbee” that people still search and that may yield fewer results. You will want to focus on the keyword that is searched often and results in fewer relevant websites, because otherwise your website might be overwhelmed by competition.

After you have chosen a suitable keyword or keyword phrase, the next step is to implement that keyword throughout all areas of that page or your website. It’s good to have the keyword in your domain name (or at least the page URL), for each page; it should also be contained in the title, the Header tag, and the footer of the web page. Moreover, you need it in your meta description and meta keyword tags (this is a place where the search engine program searches extensively).

Finally, it’s essential to have your keyword repeated at least several times throughout your text (2-3% is recommended). If you follow all of these instructions, then your website is well on its way to being optimized for search engines using this keyword!

This is called “on page” optimization; meaning you are optimizing the contents of your page to be found by the search engines. “Off page” optimization is incredibly important too, many folks say that off page optimization can count for 65% of your success. We will cover this topic in other blog posts. An example of off page optimzation is called “Link building.”