What is SEO, and how does it work, anyway?

SEO = Search Engine Optimization. It’s shorthand for making sure your website is visible on search engines like Google. Simply put, good SEO usually results in better visibility for your website when people are looking online for things via search engines like Google, and Bing, and…oh, who are we kidding…Google is King.

The Kingdom of the Google Spiders

An oversimplification of how it works: King Google has billions of little spider friends who are crawling the world wide web 24/7 looking for new information and reporting back to the palace. When they find things they think will please him, King G puts those things higher up on search results pages. The trick is knowing what pleases him, and that is mostly a secret.

Many people think SEO is only about keywords, and some people are still mistakenly doing what’s called keyword stuffing: that is, stringing a bunch of keywords together and shoving them into copy (awkward), listing them on the backend and calling it a day. That doesn’t work.

Algorithm, who could ask for anything more?

Google’s system for ranking websites is proprietary, and they change it from time to time, so we’ll never know every element that results in a top ranking, but we do know a little. We know, for example, that keywords matter but what really matters is how you use them. Google’s main goal is giving people what they’re looking for in searches, so if we want them to serve our site to searchers, we need to demonstrate that we can deliver on those queries. In recent years, Google’s spiders have been using a system that helps them to better understand language so they can deliver better results, and that means adding context around keywords is more important than ever. Good SEO copy on the front and back ends of a website will include simple, contextual use of keywords that help the search engine satisfy the queries it gets.

We also know that link strategies are important — what you’re linking to on your website, what you’re linking to outside your website, and who’s linking to you. And there are other factors to consider such as meta data and ALT descriptions.

Factors that are harder to control and compete with are the number of visitors to your site and advertising spend both with and beyond Google. Big brands will always have more visitors and bigger advertising budgets than small ones.

What if never rank highly?

Consider the big picture and the fact that search results can vary based on things like location, time of day, previous searches performed, and more. So, yes, your Uncle Ned will probably tell you that if you’re not showing up at the top of his Google search page, you’re doing something wrong. But you can send Uncle Ned back to the BBQ grill because his search results will probably not be the same as everyone else’s. Beyond that, even if it were possible (it’s not), it might not make strategic sense for your small enterprise to consistently be the first ranked business on every single Google search on earth.

Rest assured that SEO considerations are a regular part of our design process and we include basic SEO elements in every aspect of our designs.