You’ve all heard the term SEO. But what exactly does it mean? And why should SEO be so important to you?
So, What is Search Engine Optimization?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. SEO means optimizing your web site to get organic, or free, traffic from search engines like Google and YouTube.
The search engines send out crawlers to go through web sites and index web site data. Google’s crawler is called GoogleBot. These crawlers go to web sites and then follow links throughout your site and then send that data back to the search engines. Think about a crawler working the same way you do when you surf a web site and click from link to link.
When you optimize your web site you are making it easier for the search engines to crawl your site, and index and categorize your web site content.
Search engine optimization is important because this is how the search engines find your web site, how your site gets displayed on search engines like Google, and how people find your web site.
Important SEO Best Practices
Page Titles, Page Descriptions and Page Content Should Be about the Same Thing
Have page titles and descriptions and page content that are relevant to each other. Your page title and descriptions should accurately describe what the page is about. This page is about search engine optimization and why it’s important. My page title is What is Search Engine Optimization and Why Is It Important? My page description is SEO stands for search engine optimization. SEO means optimizing your web site to get organic, or free, traffic from search engines like Google and YouTube. Both of these page elements are about this article.
Internal Links
Link to your own pages. Link related articles together by using key words that are about both articles. For example I am linking the headline Important SEO Best Practices to a case study on search engine optimization. And below under Sitemap I am linking XML sitemap to NuZoo Media’s XML sitemap.
Content is King
Provide relevant content in short, easy to read paragraphs. Whatever your page title is your article should be about it. If someone does a search on Google and comes to your site but that page ends up having nothing to do with their search they will leave immediately.
Sitemap
An XML site map will help the search engine crawlers index your web site, and also make it easy for users. Link the sitemap from the main menu.
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