Why do SEO?

Why Care about Search Engine Optimization?

You want to get to the top of Google and other search engines so visitors will go to your website and not someone else's site.  That way you get free search engine traffic and don't have to do as much pay advertising to get website visitors. 

The problem is that your competitors want to be high up in the search engines too.

Search Engine Optimization is a way for Google and the other search engines to know what your website is about as well as how it ranks for your topic compared to your competitors' websites

When you have a website you are competing for visitors against all of the other websites that are on your same topic. 

Here is a breakdown of the competitors you will be up against:

1.  People who don't do any search engine optimization on their website at all.  These are the people that either don't know or don't care about getting listed high in Google.  These folks are usually just happy to have a website.

2.  People who do a little bit of SEO on their website but not enough to help them.  Some people - either by luck or design - do a little bit of SEO on their website but not enough to really benefit them.  Most people fall into this category.

These people usually pick the most popular keywords which get the most visitors and put up some meta tags and expect that to work.   While you would think that would be good because you want a lot of visitors, that's not the case since the most popular keywords also have the most competition. 

Your goal is to get the most visitors with the least amount of effort.

3. People who do SEO on their websites and do it well.  These are the people who are your main competitors.  They know what they are doing and are good at what they do. 

You can sometimes luck out and have a business or niche where your competitors don't do SEO in which case you can own the number 1 google ranking without much effort, but it's rare.  This good luck happens most often with local businesses in smaller towns. 

So, how do you rank highly with Google?

I've put together a Search Engine Optimization tutorial that explains SEO basics for beginners. 

SEO Basics for Beginners - search engine optimization tutorial for beginners and non-techies

SEO Keywords - a short guide that explains the basics of what seo keywords are, why you should care about them and how to choose a good keyword. 

SEO Meta Tags

Search Engine Ranking Optimization for Your Website