What Does SEO Stand For and Other Search Engine Optimization Basics

You've probably heard the term SEO if you've done even the slightest bit of marketing online. What does SEO stand for? Search Engine Optimization. And what that basically means is the process of presenting your web content in a way that agrees with the search engines. And that helps in getting your content towards the front so that when someone types in a term that is relevant to your business, you will be seen!
So, SEO in a nutshell is a marketing technique to make your website more visible to search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN or others. Did you know that when people do a search on one of these search engines, they will only look at the results that come up in the first page? So if you want to be seen online, that's where you need to be!

Don't let the term SEO and Search Engine Optimization intimidate you… all it really translates to is more visitors, more traffic, and if you’ve got a product, more sales. SEO is integral to a good marketing campaign – there’s no two ways around it. But you don't need to be an expert in SEO to get it working for you right away. Start with the basics and move forward as you feel more comfortable.

So, your goal is to get your web content to appear on the very first page of any search engine’s results when someone types in the words that are relevant to your business. These words or phrases are known as keywords – they’re your best friends when it comes to search engine optimization.

There are a number of free resources you can find on the web that will teach you how to use keywords. For instance, some tools will tell you how often a certain keyword phrase is searched for, and show you other, similar keywords. These other keywords might allow you to expand the focus of your web page to attract more visitors. You can also use this information to target keywords that are less common on the Internet – this this is a way to avoid a huge amount of competition and to corner the market in all the terms that are particular to your business.

Keywords aren’t the only search engine optimization tool you can use. Probably the important aspect of SEO is linking. Search engines basically use links to a website as references, like when an employer calls up past employers to find out how good an applicant is. The more legitimate references or links that you have coming into your website from other sources (so, people who link from their site to your site in order to provide their visitors with more information), the higher that the site will be ranked in the search engines. Creating links within your pages is a great way to enhance SEO.

Keywords and linking are just the tip of the Search Engine Optimization iceberg. There are many more advanced techniques that can be used to bring a site to the top of the search page ranks and keep it there. This serves as just an introductory guide, but now you know the answer to the question; what does SEO stand for?