Lesson 1: Introduction to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of optimizing a web page or portal for search engines. ξPeople are now spending 7 times more time on the Internet than on watching TV, what does this tell us as marketers. It tells us that we need to focus into online marketing, in which SEO is a major player. There are four major engines currentlyy on the market. The most important and complex of them is Google, by a far reach.

Search Market Share as of April 2011

1. Google (65%)
2. Bing (17%)
3. Yahoo! (13.80%)
4. Other (4.20%)

Before I can start teaching you about optimizing a web site you need to understand how search engines work. A search engine is an online portal that indexes and ranks web sites. Users will access the search engine portal to try to find the correct answers to their problems. Answers are created instantly by using a the engine???s search algorithm. This algorithm will take the the user???s query and compare it with the pages that are on it???s index. It will then create a list of web pages that will try to answer what the user was asking for.

So how does a search engine finds out about my web site? Search engines have an online application built in them known as a Web Crawler or Spider. The sole role of this application is to find and check for updates on web pages in the world wide web. Once a spider finds a web page it will check in the main engine directory to see if the page has been indexed before. If the given web page has not been indexed or if it was updated since the last time the spider visited the page, it will insert it into a separate queue. Another application/bot will access the page to cache the information and the code in it. If the page has not been updated since the last time the bot visited, it will leave it alone and move on to the next one.

I will be referring to Google’s algorithm when referring to a search engine algorithm as this is the one with the biggest search engine market piece. Be aware that search algorithms are constantly changing, so what I write today might change tomorrow.

Here are the major factors that are taken into consideration by the search algorithm to produce the results. Information gathered from SEOMoz

• 24% Trust/Authority of the Host Domain
• 22% Link Popularity of the Specific Page
• 20% Anchor Text of External Links
• 15% On-Page Keyword Usage
• 7% Traffic and Click-Through Data
• 6% Social Graph Metrics
• 5% Registration and Hosting Data

To rank for a certain keyword you need to succeed in all of the algorithm ranking factors. The web site that has the best factors to it is the one that will rank best, or show up higher in the rankings. I will be teaching you how to optimize your web site to achieve the best results possible in all of the ranking factors. You need to have paciense and know than to rank for a term it takes time. You first need to get the page indexed, then get your content cached and then start building your authority. Once you get all of your this together you will begin seeing the results.

On my next lesson I will begin to explain the process of optimizing a web site, which is analyzing the market that you want to rank for and doing a proper keyword analysis. This is a very important step on your campaign as it will dictate how your whole pre-launch campaign will be based on. This is will get you categorized in the search engine eys for certain terms, the most accurate you get categorized the first time, the easier it will be to adjust and earn a higher authority.