Search Engine Optimization, commonly referred to as SEO, is very important in today’s day and age (especially for web masters). Anyone who is looking to start a website should be fully accustom to the practice of SEO and ready to apply it to their new website.

This blog will cover the basics of Search Engine Optimization, go in depth with different SEO practices, and overall help you improve the Search Engine Optimization of your website.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

For those who don’t know what Search Engine Optimization is, it is just as it seems. Your website must be optimized for the search engines to index it properly. Let’s break this down.

1. Search engines – Even if you don’t know what a search engine is, you probably use one everyday. Search engines are websites created to aid users in finding other websites. A few common examples of search engines are Google, Yahoo, and Ask. Although these are the first to come to one’s mind when asked about search engines, there are literally millions out there. It is impossible for your website to be perfect for every search engine, so you should probably focus on the one that you think your users would use most.
2. Search engine indexing – Search engine indexing is the process by which a search engine adds websites to it’s list of websites. This allows the additions to show up as search results. All of the largest search engines are updating their databases 24/7 with automated scripts. Since these scripts are automated, they lack the common sense that a human interpreter would have. Therefore, you need to make your website accessible by these search engine indexers to index your site correctly and more efficiently. Remember, the better that your site is indexed, the higher up it will appear in the list of results, and the more clicks that it will get, leading to more profit in the long run.
3. SERP – The SERP, or Search Engine Result Page, is the page that you view after doing a search query on a search engine. I don’t use this term a lot, but other SEO documentation might.

How can I do this?

So now you may be asking – how can I optimize my website so that I can make more profit? The answer isn’t a simple one. There are many ways to optimize your site – we will get into them later. First, it is important to understand the basics of SEO. If you don’t understand how it works, reread the definitions above. You don’t need to understand how the search engine itself works, just the process by which the search engine adds sites to their database, whether those sites be that of you, or that of your competition.