The SEO Journey

by Christine Stander, 9/30/2007

Working in the fast-paced search engine marketing industry, I have often been faced with the question: "Where exactly does SEO fit into web site development?"

The relevance of SEO cannot be overestimated. Increasingly, webmasters and site owners alike are beginning to realize the importance of optimizing a site to increase rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs). However, they are not always sure how to go about this.

The Growing Importance of SEO

A few years ago, web sites were created with the goal in mind of bringing companies closer to their clients, i.e. their target market. As the popularity of search engines grew, the number of web sites being created increased alongside. During this process, webmasters and site owners began to realize how important it was to get that all-important competitive edge by reaching the ideal top 20 positions on SERPs. Thus the battle for the top 10 positions ensued.

With this was born the need for people to find and understand a method of constantly reaching those positions. In the case of SEO, the techniques which evolved can be divided into "good guys" and "bad guys" (the proverbial "white hat" SEO and "black hat SEO", respectively.) Of course, some SEOs evolved into more shades of black than others, finding techniques to "outsmart" the spiders, while others remained true to developing content-relevant sites aimed at users rather than the spiders, while still attaining those sought-after top positions. (But that is a topic for another day.)

Although the black-hats may differ from my opinion here, SEO is no quick fix to propel a site into high-ranking top positions. SEO and usability go hand in hand. Target search engines and searchers at the same time by writing good, relevant, converting content. Map your site well with internal links to related sections. In so doing, you will provide your browsers with easy-to-follow navigation and simultaneously help spiders to index your site. Achieving a well-balanced site is a tedious journey, but when implemented correctly, may produce long-term stable results that will drive your site to top positions and increase your conversions.

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Why Are Long Tail Keywords So Important?

Long tail keywords is a term you will often come across in hpol_abbreviation_seo01 circles, and basically refers to the less popular keywords that get fewer searches per month in the search engines, but are easier to rank highly for, because there are far fewer sites competing for that term. Read 'Why Are Long Tail Keywords So Important?'.

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