What Exactly Do You DO?
By Jen Lewis
SEO. It's not that complicated, people.
.......okay, it is. SO I'm going to take a second and spell it out. S-E-O stands for Search Engine Optimization. Basically, I optimize websites to help them get found better on search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.). SEO peoples do this in a number of ways: linkbuilding, content development and keyword research are the top few.
Linkbuilding
Google (and the other search engines) decides how important your site is based on how many links are pointing to it. SO if I got someone from CIA.gov to link to my website, that would be a BIG DEAL. Because 1) They're a PR freaking EIGHT site, 2) They're a .gov site and 3) They get a tonnnn of traffic. Google weighs those qualities, decides that it's an important site, and hence decides that any site they link to would probably be just as awesome.
Content Development
I really don't need to explain this one. It's writing! But it's writing with a twist... using keywords (see next section) that people are actually searching for... Google crawls your website, sees those keywords and decides that your site is important enough to rank for those keywords. Oh, algorithms, you are difficult to explain. Basically, I write a LOT.
Keyword Research
This part is fun. This is where marketing truly comes into play... in this part of SEO, I get to crawl inside the minds of searchers and figure out what they search and how I can use it to my advantage (muahahaaha!). I use a few different tools to accomplish this, and I find the keywords that are the most relevant to a site. THEN I implement them all over the site and hope that Google realizes that the site is worthy of ranking for that term (or terms).
SEO isn't ALL I do, but it's the majority. Maybe I'll cover the rest of my work in another article... maybe not...