The Mission of SEO Igniter
Everyone in the online publishing world should have at least a basic understanding of SEO – Search Engine Optimization. Whether you have a static site, a blog, or some sort of non-blog site that uses a blogging platform as it’s CMS (Content Management System), search engine optimization can be a key ingredient in bringing the right visitors to your site.
There was a period of time when search engine optimization was considered to be evil, and was summarily dismissed as the haven of spammers and self-absorbed, self-promoting, black hat darkworkers. It’s so easy for people to get caught up in the rebellious rhetoric of A-List marketers, and join in with “Yeah! Screw Google!” I don’t need them.
Things seem to be turning around. I think that’s a good thing. The web really does need sites that
- have good content,
- are easily navigable,
- are user friendly,
- are search engine friendly.
Whether you like Google or not, search engines are one of the primary ways that people look for information on the internet. Contrary to this short term rebellion against SEO, search engine friendly and user friendly are really the same thing. That’s because search engines are designed to serve users. They employ highly trained algorithmic geniuses to try and better serve their users with a result that solves the users problem.
SEO got, and still largely has, a reputation of being “Keyword stuffing.” People think of spam pages they’ve seen that have the word “Latex” splattered all over it, with no helpful content whatsoever and associate a practice like that with SEO. What isn’t understood is that those spam pages are not good SEO, and they are not even indexed in the search engines.
What you really want is keyword density. This means to use your keywords with enough frequency to make it clear what the topic of the page is, but it is not splattering a word all over the page thinking that search engines will even rank that sort of useless content. Algorithms are imperfect, and are tweaked constantly to try and become more and more precise, but the foundation of the entire premise can best be summed up with the statement:
Real people recommending real brands.
On that basis, links pointing to a page are counted as “votes” for that content. It’s not that simple though, because not every vote is equal, or even counted for that matter. Google, and other search engines seek to filter out spam, duplicate content, and worthless links. On the search engine end, you can believe that it’s on par with astrophysics in term of being complicated.
But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. The basics are quite basic, especially if you are willing to follow the guidelines of being a reputable publisher. In it’s true essence, SEO involves everything, from reputation management, marketing, customer service, public relations, writing skill, web design, and more.
Some people try to spin this as holistic seo, or advanced seo, or seo 2.0. Really it’s simply good SEO. Being self-absorbed, wondering what’s in it for me? when dealing with others, and all those other supposed evils associated with SEO aren’t good seo. They are poor SEO and poor business from people with poor judgment, and worse business sense.
Good SEO involves all these things. Link building is an essential part of Search Engine Optimization. You can build links to yourself, and I recommend that you do, in “white hat” or by the book ways. But link building becomes a synergy of momentum when you have what?
Real people recommending real brands.
Hmm. It’s almost like that would be easier with real people recommending… Hey wait a minute. I need people to like my brand to do that!
See how public relations is SEO?
There’s certainly a lot of information to sort through on the topic. It’s certainly not going to be covered in this post. I just wanted to make clear that the journey here at SEO Igniter is one that will be built on a well rounded and informative view of SEO.
So, how does search engine optimization work?
I’m glad you asked. I’ll cover the actual basics soon, as we get started building good brands with good seo, recommended by real good people. Thanks for visiting SEO Igniter. Comments are welcome. Feel free to post questions on what you would like to see covered.