What Does SEO Stand For?

What Does SEO Mean & Should It Be Important To You?

SEO is a term that most of the world has never heard of. The fact that you are interested in learning what it means says a lot about you and what you are trying to do. You are almost certainly interested in getting exposure in some shape or form via a search engine and you most likely have your sites set on Google.

SEO became something to be understood, used, learned & "changed" in the mid 1990's when search engines (websites that categorized other websites) began to determine how to rank one website above another.

*Resource: Learn the history of SEO on wikipedia. This is some great information.

Here is a quick video I made for all those people that love to learn by hearing and watching rather than reading. It is a little more entertaining to watch as well. Enjoy!

I have invested 1,000s of hours over the course of 6 years to understanding SEO. I can confidently say that I understand SEO well enough to teach it and learn more about it all the time.

For me SEO has given me the ability to help grow local businesses. Some of the types of local businesses I help are local painters, locksmiths, roofers, electricians, HVAC companies, and more.

*Here is a page all about the leads I send my painters. They keep sending me the reviews and I keep posting them. SEO really does work but it isn’t exactly what you think it is.

Noun:

Yes: It Will Greatly Increase Your Chances of Success Online

Although SEO has changed dramatically since its conception it is still an important tool to have when trying to get People to find you online. Implementing correct on page SEO practices and correct off page SEO practices will help a website rank better on search engines.

For example, title tags are an easy thing to optimize and help increase rankings. Title tags are one of the first things search engines use to learn what a website is about. If each page of your website is not using title tags the right way, you are almost certainly losing rankings on all search engines. *Click here to learn more about title tags.

No: It Will Distract and Blind You From Success

Thousands of people obsess about SEO and are constantly trying to please the BIG search engines that rank websites and most of them are still using incorrect practices to do so.

SEO can kind of be like the number on a scale when you are trying to lose weight. There are so many things that affect that number and people obsess over it, lose sleep over it, cry about it, and the number doesn’t really mean anything if the person isn’t healthy.

Before you start caring about that number start caring about the people that will be coming to your website, think about what they need, want, or expect to find. Then build your website with them always at center stage. Remember that a website is for human beings, not digital spiders to crawl around on.

There is a lot to learn about SEO and before you begin you deserve to do some soul searching. If you don’t, you may lose your soul in your attempts to learn, master, and apply SEO. Here are some questions to help.

1. Why do you want to learn SEO?

2. Is there someone you can hire who has already specialized in it?

3. What are you trying to achieve?

4. Are you trying to make money? If yes, what are the top 3 tasks or things you do currently that make you the most money?

If you are like many people out there, you want to learn SEO so you can rank your website higher. Well guess what? Properly ranking a website takes a lot of time, energy, and trial and error. Not that it can’t be done by a newbie but it almost always isn’t the best use of their time.

What do I mean?

Once upon a time there was a local business owner. He was a locksmith by trade and very good at it. His main problem was getting new business.

This locksmith was no dummy and he couldn’t ignore all the signs that the phone book was out and Google was in. He determined that it was time to get a website and to show up on Google (at the top). He didn’t know anything about websites or showing up on Google. In fact, the only thing he knew about Google is how to get on it and search for things.

So, he decided to do what many local business owners do and he put on yet another hat. This hat was a little funky. It had a bunch of links, keywords, pictures, videos, and a lot of writing all over it. The moment he put on that hat he found himself in a world of wonder and awe with a bunch of ups and downs. The more he wore the hat the less time he had to be a locksmith. But he was making progress…with the website & know he knew about backlinks.

Within the first month this locksmith had built his first website. He used a free platform to do it and was experiencing some minor struggles with editing it and making it SEO friendly. However, he was proud of his accomplishments and thought his website was amazing but one thing seemed to be wrong. He wasn’t getting any calls from it even though he told all his friends about it, got a bunch of likes for it on Facebook, and included his keywords on the website. He couldn’t quite figure out what to do so he reached out for help.

This scenario has played out time and time again. I know it too well because these small business owners often call me for help. The sad thing is that there are thousands and thousands out there still struggling and either don’t know an expert to help them or they just don’t want to take off the funky SEO/Marketing hat.

The Worst Thing About This Story

By far the biggest loss in this scenario is that this locksmith took time away from the thing he does best, being a locksmith! Remember that you don’t build a successful business by being a jack of all trades.

The Best Thing About This Story

The best thing about this particular scenario is for the business owner to find a trusted professional who cares about their business to help. Small businesses need to use marketing that gets a ROI because budgets are tight and costly mistakes can close a local business’ doors for good.

Everyone sees the world from behind their two eyes and we miss a lot. Because of this I try to see things from other people’s perspective in order to learn more and get a better understanding on a specific topic.

Here are a bunch of answers from a survery I took on Facebook. The people who answered these questions generally had some type of understanding of SEO.

I got a bunch of answers from a wide range of people that all had somewhat of an interest in SEO.

33 Answers To My Question From People Surveyed

1. Content

2. Content

3. Content

4. Unique Content

5. Having/using relevant content to keep your prospective clients interested long enough to make the decision to contact you. Content,

6. Content marketing helps improve SEO.

7. Constant updates

8. Long-tail keywords

9. Integrating the strong keywords well in the title and early segments of the posts.

10. Keywords! Keywords! Keywords! Lol but seriously use your keywords in everything as well as link your website pages to your other pages using keywords in your body that are actual links.

12. Knowing what is searched for, how often, by which target market

13. Narrow your keyword focus

14. It’s more than stuffing lots of keywords on the page but there’s a combination of factors that go into it.

15. Knowing what your clients are searching for (words, terms, phrases etc)

16. Good keywords

17. Keyword

18. Placing those correct search terms in your online presence .

19. Quality back linking from sites with high trust flow.

20. Backlinking on other blogs

21. Links/citations

19. Get specific about your features

20. Mobile optimization.

21. Stay on top of the newest updates and changes in SEO

21. 5 great google reviews

22. Reviews

23. Web Crawler recognition

24. Clout factor

25. Accurate Website Information

26. Research

27. Ongoing Maintenance/Refining

28. Strong social citations.

29. Compliance (site speed, low bounce, quality current relevant content)

30. Don’t know

31. LSI

32. Image optimization

33. Maybe domain (age, etc)

Conclusion

SEO and ranking the importance of one factor above the other is very much so relative. The most important SEO focus for one website is can be completely different than another website. It also depends on the type of site, industry, etc.

For example, a local company has some very different SEO factors than a website that isn’t competing for local search terms.

I have created a private Facebook group where I answer questions and share my articles on marketing. Feel free to connect with me here and ask me whatever you want.

I can’t promise that I will always be able to provide the answer for you but I am working on it everyday. I do own and operate a business and have many clients that I do marketing for.

How To Join?

Click on the link below and request to join. Once I get your request I will approve it. I invite you to participate in the group and always add value to the group and I will do the same.

→ Join Here: eWebify’s Facebook Group on Marketing

- 6+ years of marketing experience

- Wikipedia: History of SEO (I stumbled on this page and thought it had some cool facts for all those SEO nerds out there.