Introduction to SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

SEO - The More You Know
If the Internet were the world's largest library - which essentially, it is - a search engine would be considered the card catalog.  Surely you remember card catalogs from elementary and middle schools...spending what seemed like an eternity standing in front of those giant wooden chests, staring at the wall of drawers thinking, "Hmm...ya know, I'm not so sure I need to find that book after all...". 

Search engines have changed all of that.  Virtually whatever information a person could want is just a few keystrokes away.  Why is this important to small businesses?  Not only do small business owners need to understand the basics of how the search engines work, but how prospective customers use search engines to find what they want.  The more you know about the basics of how search engines work and how people use them, the greater advantage you will have over your competition.

Search Engine Optimization - Where We'd Be Without It
Search engines have developed sets of rules and criteria for ranking websites to help search users not only find information more quickly, but to ensure that the information is relevant to the words used in their search.  Essentially, people got tired of typing "pizza new york ny" into a search engine have having pornography websites come up among the results.  Search engines recognized very quickly that if their results weren't reliable and relevant, people would use them less...meaning millions of dollars in lost advertising revenue, or worse - bankruptcy.  Imagine this scenario:

You wake up at 4:00 am to find sewage backing up into your toilets, bathtubs and sinks...you run to the computer, pull up Google and type in "24-hour emergency plumber jacksonville fl".  Much to your dismay, the first 4 pages of results have nothing to do with plumbing or plumbers, but advertisements for everything from prescription drugs to hot stocks.  In the amount of time it took you to weed through the results to find the plumber you were searching for, the first floor of your house has turned into a wading pool of sewage.  YUMMY! 

Now, wake up...it was all a bad dream.  Thanks to Search Engine Optimization, it is far less likely that you will receive irrelevant results in a keyword search today than it was 10 years ago.

SEO Today - Not Your Big Brother's SEO
How many times have you heard, "I know a guy who knows a guy who used to build websites...he knows all about this stuff..."?  Unless this "guy" knows they guys who work for search engines - like Google, or one of many respected SEO sources - like SEOmoz, that "guy" is probably going to recommend "tricks" used in the past.  Link exchanges and link farms were once very popular and worked very well.  Those days are gone.  Employing those tactics today could get a URL banned from search engines altogether - that's right, kicked out completely.  Search engines are much more advanced now than when they were introduced.  In an effort to improve the user experience, search engines are constantly trying to provide more accurate, relevant and useful results in keyword based searches.  That means the field of SEO is ever-changing. 

It is not uncommon to find conflicting opinions from some of the most respected and knowledgeable experts in the field of SEO.  What is required to achieve a page one ranking in a small market (like a local auto repair shop) is vastly different from what is required to achieve a page one ranking in a large market (like an online scented candle store that targets a nationwide audience).  Furthermore, the steps taken to gain a page one ranking two years ago might be very different than the steps required to achieve a similar ranking for the same site today.  In the world of SEO, constant research, testing, trial & error, and knowledge of current trends is power.