Search Engine Optimization Explained for laymen

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a term that daunts those who are not conversant with it and haunts those who are. Many have tried to define search engine optimization, unfortunately most of these definitions comes from experts who are not able to abstain themselves from using terms like “organic”, “algorithms” or “SERP”. For someone who’s trying to get familiar with search engine optimization, the term “organic” is a little too much. As a result most people would just drop the idea of learning about seo themselves and simply hire some seo professional to do the job (and that’s exactly what the “authors of these definitions” want you to do).

Not that you must go through this holy task of “optimizing for search engines” yourself, but there’s no harm in understanding the job better, so that you know what you are paying for when engaging some lad to do it. Now, those who are already on familiar terms with SEO can skip the next two paragraphs because I m going to take a very laymanish approach while explaining SEO. Here you go …

You know search engines? No … never mind … What about Google? (Please contact me if you don’t know Google, I’d love to get in touch with an alien) Anyhow, Google is a search engine and internet users make use of search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN Live, etc) to find what they are looking for at internet. For example, If someone is interested in business news, he will type “business news” in search box and the search engine will come up with hundreds and thousands of websites that are related to “business news” (in less than a second) … you can choose any of them, browse and in case you are not satisfied, go back and choose another.

Now put yourself in an entrepreneur’s shoes who’s looking to sell “peanuts” to internet user and suppose that some people are actually interested in buying “peanuts” online. What you can do as a peanut seller is to make a website (say buymypeanuts.com) and wait for the search engines to miraculously place it on top of the results when some user type “peanuts” in the search box and click “search”. Remember, there will be so many other entrepreneurs with their own websites looking to sell the same product. Search engines are undoubtedly the most effective source to attract visitors, and most online users don’t bother to check all search results. That means, if your website cannot make it to the first 10 or 15 results of the search engine, you are nothing but cleaned out. You’d ask. What can I do to avoid this disaster? The answer is, SEO.

Therefore, SEO is everything (or anything) you do to optimize your website in a way that it will surface on top of the results when someone search for peanuts (or any of your targeted keywords).

PS.

My future posts will cover the “how to do” part in detail. Make sure you don’t miss any of them in case you are interested in becoming skilled at search engine optimization.