Basic Understanding of SEO

First, let me tell you Sean and I are involved in the community of 20 Something Bloggers and they held a blog swap this year that we both participated in. This is the reason I am guest blogging on his blog today. I hope you don't mind. And please feel free to visit my blog: The Daily Douz. I would LOVE to have more comments and visitors!

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a phenomenon that has been around for at least fifteen years now and is rapidly growing in popularity. It weighs heavily on the technological side of internet and web design but is essential to follow if you want to rise in the Search Engine Rankings (such as Google, Yahoo or Bing). Mind you, I don't claim to be an expert in SEO but I do have two and a half years of work experience in the field and I was priveledged to learn from an SEO guru.

There is a whole lot of information to cover dealing with SEO but you need to know the two separate aspects in the field. ONPAGE OPTIMIZATION and OFFPAGE OPTIMIZATION. Onpage is where you tweak your own website design, meta tags (titles, description, keywords, etc), alt tags, homepage so that everything in your code is SEO-friendly. Offpage means every effort you make for SEO off your own site (link building, article marketing, directory listing, advertising, social media, blog commenting, etc).

Most people understand the importance behind link building and still believe it is the most effective way to promote your blog to the Search Engines. The entire time I worked for a Marketing company in their SEO department, we focused the most on building links pointing to your site(s). The concept is like Google will see the links as "votes" for your website - for every link pointing to your site, Google understands this website is legit and is really about SEO (or whatever niche your blog is about). It is important to know how to insert links onto your pages and where to place them. My understanding is that link farms are NOT SEO-friendly and you shouldn't participate in those at all. The best way I've found to produce results for your website is to add links to related posts that you have written on your site. So if you have a blog post about Photography, you should list all the photography-related links on that blog post, this way all of the content around the links helps the Search Engines know those links are about photography too. Does that make sense? (I really hope it does.) So what is link building anyway? Well, it is when you put up a link on your blog for someone else and you ask them to do the same in return, all for free. Webmasters usually understand SEO and should look on this favorably. After all, they are getting a free link in return. (One tip: You should NEVER list a link to someone else on your blogroll, or on your homepage. This makes it so every single page of your blog has THEIR link on it when Google looks at it. And that is not very good for you or your website. I only list my own websites on my blogroll or on my homepage, unless it's a sponsored ad where I might make money from it.)

Another important Offpage optimization is Social Media. Twitter and Facebook are probably the most popular in the social media sphere. There are businesses on Twitter, people's pets have their own accounts and various celebrities have accounts as well as the blogging community (us). Facebook is a bit different from Twitter, in that it is mostly a connection site where you can connect with people you haven't talked to in years (high school buddies, distant relatives, or even meet new local people) but they have created a way for social bookmarking to be involved on Facebook as well. You just have to be "friends" with that person usually to see their links. Well Social Media is a way to promote your blog in a viral sense - one that hopefully catches people's eye and they will re-post (ReTweet) about it. That way other people are talking about your site and passing it along without any real effort on your part. It helps to write content that can become viral (such as controversy or something in the news currently). So go create your Twitter account for your website under a similar name as your site and start posting on there like a real person would. Most people will not "follow" you if you are merely posting links and nothing else (that looks like a robot is posting to your account). Be real. You will get more followers if you are open and real.

With Onpage optimization, you must focus on the meta tags. What are Meta Tags? They are embedded in your site's code (or they SHOULD be) and give the Search Engines more of an idea of what your site is about. In your Titles, Description and Keywords, it's crucial to have similar information to your overall content of your site. Keyword Research is another VERY important concept in SEO. You need to research what keywords you should use to help your blog raise in the rankings and help you make money (if that is your end goal) or get more readership.

Those are a few of the key points in Search Engine Optimization. I'm sorry I can't give you the full run-down. It tends to get a bit technologically advanced for the typical blog reader so I don't want to overwhelm you with it in the introduction. During my work experience I was able to write for one of our company's blogs here: Content Links Pages and this is what it looks like:



In conclusion, I hope everyone has a great holiday vacation from whatever it is you do and enjoy time with your families!! Feel free to ask me any questions or advice if you need help with SEO. Thanks to Sean for letting me write this lengthy post on his blog and for posting over on my blog today as well. If you are having withdrawals from Sean's writing, you can catch him over here: Blog Swap-Winter's Top Ten. Thank you for reading!

-Marci from DailyDouz

Tags: Blog Exchange, blog swap, dailydouz, link building, marci, meta tags, offpage, onpage, search engine optimization, seo, social media, Technology